A meteorite that crashed into a New Jersey home is now considered one of the most scientifically valuable meteorites ever recovered because it contains the building blocks of life, astronomers say.

On July 16, 2024, a meteorite tore through the roof of a home in Hillsborough, New Jersey, shortly after it shook the New York City area with a sonic boom, according to researchers at the SETI Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to exploring the origins of life and searching for extraterrestrial intelligence.

The owner of the house told researchers that he heard a crash and found a hole in the ceiling of the master bedroom. The meteorite had a strong sulfur-like odor and black fragments, debris and dust covered the room.

The meteorite was then preserved by the homeowner using disposable gloves, aluminum foil and glass jars.

“Thanks to the homeowner’s quick reaction, these are the most pristine CM1/2 meteorites we know of,” Mike Zolensky of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in a statement.

After observation, scientists learned the meteorite was a CM1/2 carbonaceous chondrite — an exceptionally rare and primitive type of meteorite, according to a paper published in Science Advances on Wednesday.

A forensic study of the meteorite’s fragments showed they preserved bits of a small, primitive asteroid that had once been soaked in concentrated salty fluids, said Peter Jenniskens, a meteor astronomer for NASA and the SETI Institute and lead author of the paper.

A high concentration of salt in briny fluids can create molecules crucial to life on Earth, and scientists said this meteorite contains some of those building blocks of the life.

The “alien world chemistry” found inside Hillsborough, which also contained a diverse suite of carbon-bearing compounds, amino acids and other prebiotic molecules, suggests that these rare types of meteorites may have shaped the organic inventory of the early solar system and brought the materials to Earth that later would support organic life, the astronomers said.

Dubbed “alien world chemistry” by the SETI Institute, the meteorite, called Hillsborough, contains a diverse suite of carbon-bearing compounds, amino acids and other prebiotic molecules. Researchers say this suggests that these rare types of meteorites may have shaped the organic inventory of the early solar system and brought the materials to Earth that later would support organic life.

The meteorite, which was about the size of a heavy airline bag, entered the atmosphere at about 32,000 mph, sending a shockwave through New York and New Jersey. Dozens of observers in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania reported seeing the meteor to the American Meteor Society.

American Meteor Society cameras in Northford, Connecticut, and Douglassville, Pennsylvania, captured an image of the meteor, as did a doorbell camera in Wayne, New Jersey, Mike Hankey, operations manager at the AMS, said in a statement.

“The path traced back to low in the asteroid belt,” Hankey said.

The fragile rock broke into several pieces, the researchers said. Doppler weather radar at Newark Liberty International Airport detected a long cloud of pebbles falling from Staten Island to New Jersey.

6-minute read

• Documents required to be filed by the NY-NJ World Cup host committee were delayed, filled with errors and missing information
• These documents are one of the few ways to track how the committee is raising and spending money, including at least $111 million in taxpayer dollars
• The NJ Attorney General was made aware of the missing documents because of a public information request by NorthJersey.com

The New York New Jersey World Cup host committee appears to have operated and solicited donations to support the 2026 World Cup soccer matches held in the Garden State for more than three years without having filed legally required paperwork with New Jersey’s attorney general, according to documents obtained exclusively by NorthJersey.com.

The host committee did not register its 501(c)(6) nonprofit with the Division of Consumer Affairs in the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General until June 4, 2026 — more than three years after the nonprofit was formed in February 2023.

Nelida O’Neill, who works in the Attorney General’s charities registration and investigation section, sent a “notice of unregistered charity” to the host committee on April 7, 2026 — only after NorthJersey.com filed a public information request seeking the registration documents on April 6.

Story continues below photo gallery

In addition, the host committee — which is staffed and overseen by a long list of people associated with former Gov. Phil Murphy, including his wife, board chair Tammy Murphy — made numerous errors on the paperwork it eventually submitted, such as missing documents and inaccurate information.

These documents are one of the few ways the state’s chief law enforcement officer, resident taxpayers and other members of the public can see how the host committee, which is the intermediary between FIFA and local governments, is spending and raising money, including dollars received from taxpayers, how that money is being spent and who is receiving it.

Michael Symons, a spokesman from the Attorney General’s Office, said the office would not comment on “what, if any, investigative or enforcement action is being considered,” but said failure to comply could result in civil penalties, suspension or revocation of a charitable organization’s registration.

The Attorney General’s Office is seeking additional missing documents from the host committee’s paid fundraisers, Symons added — an omission brought to its attention by NorthJersey.com.

Natalie Hamilton, a host committee spokeswoman, said the law requiring registration applies only to 501(c)(3)s, and that they registered their 501(c)(3) fundraising arm, the Welcome World Foundation, Inc.

“When the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs reached out to us earlier this year asking for a registration of the 501(c)(6) entity (New York New Jersey 2026 World Cup Host Committee, Inc.) for their database that includes both for-profit and nonprofit entities, we complied with the Division’s request and promptly provided all the information they asked for,” Hamilton said.

The law states that entities exempt from registering include certain religious organizations, educational institutions and those that do not receive gross contributions in excess of $10,000 during a fiscal year. The law does not say that 501(c)(6) nonprofits are exempt. Other 501(c)(6) organizations are registered and listed in the OAG’s public charities portal.

“Generally speaking, under New Jersey’s Charitable Registration and Investigation Act, charitable organizations that engage in fundraising activities that either raise more than $10,000 in gross contributions or compensate a third party for fundraising services must comply with certain conditions, including registering with the Division of Consumer Affairs’ Charities Registration and Investigation Section,” Symons said.

PKF O’Connor Davies Advisory, one of the largest accounting firms in the country, was listed as the host committee’s paid tax return preparer in federal tax filings from 2023 and 2024. In 2024, the host committee paid the Harrison, New York-based accounting firm nearly $218,000 for its accounting and bookkeeping services, according to federal tax documents.

PKF O’Connor Davies did not respond to a request for comment.

Missing documents, errors

Millions of taxpayer dollars were funneled and entrusted to the politically connected host committee and Welcome World Foundation to pay for costs related to the seven World Cup matches already played this June and July at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford and the World Cup final scheduled there on July 19.

There has been little transparency about how much the tournament is estimated to cost the New Jersey and New York governments and how much each expected to receive in tax dollars. Money from New Jersey was distributed over at least five budget cycles and some budget line items used opaque language like “international events, improvements and attraction.”

In addition to a more than three-year delay in registering, the host committee filed paperwork that contains inaccurate details and is missing information.

Some documents were never filed.

Here are more details about those issues:

• The registration document submitted June 4 was signed by Alex Lasry, the host committee’s CEO, and Wesley Mathews, the president of the host committee’s board. But the law requires at least one of the two signatories to be the nonprofit’s chief fiscal officer.
• The host committee’s June 4 registration document was for 2024, but the nonprofit did not provide the Attorney General’s Office with documents for 2023, the first year the nonprofit was formed, or 2025. Annual renewal registration is required within six months after a nonprofit’s fiscal year ends, which is Dec. 31 for the host committee.
• One question on the registration form requires the name and salary of the “five most-highly compensated executive staff employees.” The document provided by the host committee includes none, instead listing five unpaid board members.
• The host committee’s registration document identifies only Jafri Strategies as a hired private fundraiser, but the organization’s federal tax filings also show the host committee paid Griffin Partners LLC $120,000 in 2024 for “donor development and fund raising.” That wasn’t disclosed to the state.

On the morning of July 16, 2024, an ultrabright meteor streaked across the sky above New York City. It exploded midflight, and part of it smashed through the roof of a home in Hillsborough, New Jersey.

“I heard an immense crash and felt the house shake,” one of the homeowners, who wanted to remain anonymous for privacy, tells Robin George Andrews at the New York Times. He then went to the source of the sound: the main bedroom. “I open the door, and I see a hole in the ceiling above my bed.”

The crime scene smelled like rotten eggs and was covered in black soot. Scattered about were several dark rocks—fragments of a meteorite, a space rock that reached Earth’s surface. Together, the recovered pieces formed a roughly three-pound object dubbed the Hillsborough meteorite.

Now, scientists have analyzed the Hillsborough meteorite and determined that it belongs to a rare class of primitive meteorites and contains certain building blocks of life and evidence of salty water. The findings, published in the journal Science Advances on July 15, provide a new window into our solar system’s past and clues about the origins of life on Earth.

AMS event #3491-2024 caught from Wayne US

The Hillsborough meteorite fortunately caused no injuries and landed in the home of a couple that was eager to safeguard the space-faring debris for scientists. They quickly contacted study co-author Mike Hankey, an amateur astronomer at the American Meteor Society, who guided them through the process of properly preserving the samples, reports Ashley Strickland at CNN. The homeowners donned gloves and carefully collected the fragments using aluminum foil and glass containers.

The rock fragments were then brought into a lab for analyses involving high-powered microscopes and investigations into its mineral and chemical composition. The work revealed that the meteorite was a CM carbonaceous chondrite, a carbon-rich class of meteorite that may have delivered water to Earth during its youth.

“These are primitive meteorites,” says Peter Brown, a meteor physicist at Western University in Canada who was not involved in the study, to the Times. “They resemble the chemistry that made the planets.”

CM carbonaceous chondrites are usually classified as either CM1 or CM2, largely depending on how much water changed their composition when they were attached to their parent asteroid. But curiously, the analyses hinted that the Hillsborough meteorite sits in between the classes. While scientists have been able to witness 22 CM-type meteorites fall to Earth, only two, including Hillsborough, have been intermediate CM1/2-types.

“Thanks to the homeowner’s quick reaction, these are the most pristine CM1/2 [meteorite pieces] we know of,” says study co-author Peter Jenniskens, a planetary astronomer at the SETI Institute, in a statement.

This exceptional state of preservation meant the Hillsborough meteorite retained much of its original composition. The rock contains microscopic fractures filled with sodium-rich material, the team found, which suggests that the parent asteroid once had salty water moving through it. The meteorite also holds a plethora of amino acids, the units that build proteins, most of which don’t occur naturally on Earth.

“One of the big surprises for me when we analyzed a small chip of the Hillsborough meteorite was the complexity of amino acids and other organic compounds,” says study co-author Danny Glavin, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in a NASA statement.

What’s more, cameras across New Jersey recorded the trajectory of the blazing meteor—considered a fireball since it outshone Venus—as it zipped through the atmosphere, which helped the scientists figure out where in the solar system the space rock came from. The team suspects that the rock was once part of the 45-mile-wide asteroid 163 Erigone in the inner asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. A huge object slammed into it about 155 million years ago, creating a family of asteroids. Then, around six million years ago, “a smaller collision destroyed one of these asteroids, from which a piece ended up in near-Earth orbit,” writes Jenniskens in an email to CNN.

“That piece experienced heat/cold cycles from spinning in the sunlight and fragmented about 200,000 years ago,” he adds. Eventually, it entered Earth’s atmosphere at 32,000 miles per hour, most of it getting vaporized on the way to the house in New Jersey.

Jenniskens says that people shouldn’t fear a home visit from a celestial rock. It’s unlikely to happen, and even if it does, a meteorite is a “treasure,” he tells Lisa Grossman at Science News. “I think you are very lucky if it happens to you.”