New Jersey meteorite reveals ancient salty water and life's building blocks

In the summer of 2024, a rock older than the Earth itself punched through the ceiling of a New Jersey home, carrying within it the chemical memory of a time before life existed. The Hillsborough meteorite — only the second of its rare, water-altered kind ever recovered — holds traces of ancient salty brines and amino acids that formed billions of years ago on a distant asteroid. Its swift and careful preservation by the homeowner transformed a moment of household chaos into one of the cleanest scientific windows ever opened onto the question of how life's ingredients arrived on early Earth. In