Rare New Jersey meteorite offers pristine snapshot of early solar system

In the summer of 2024, a fragment of the early solar system punched through a bedroom roof in Hillsborough, New Jersey, carrying within it amino acids billions of years old and the chemical memory of ancient water. The rock — a CM½ carbonaceous chondrite, only the second of its kind ever witnessed falling to Earth — arrived as both a geological rarity and a philosophical provocation, asking whether the ingredients for life were always embedded in the fabric of the cosmos. Its recovery, preserved by the careful instincts of the homeowners who found it, has given scientists an undamaged lens thr