Billions of years before it tore through a bedroom ceiling in Hillsborough, New Jersey, a fragment of the early solar system was quietly preserving chemistry that may explain how life's ingredients first assembled. Recovered in July 2024 with rare care and swiftness, the Hillsborough meteorite — a CM1/2 carbonaceous chondrite of exceptional purity — carried within it evidence of ancient saltwater brines, carbon compounds, and amino acids formed long before Earth existed. Scientists now understand that these brine-driven chemical processes were far more common across early asteroids than previo