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(NewsNation) — The meteorite that crashed in New Jersey two years ago may shed light on how life originated on Earth billions of years ago, according to a SETI Institute researcher.
Fragments from space that pierced the roof of a home July 16, 2024, contained compounds, minerals and amino acids — components that, under the right circumstances, could lead to organisms.
In fact, the recent event likely mirrors an earlier encounter between organic matter from space and the Earth when it was a “bone dry place,” SETI Institute Senior Researcher Peter Jenniskens told “Jesse Weber Live” on Wednesday.
“We think the Earth itself was just a fine enough place to get life started. But it did need compounds to start with. It needed a beginning,” he said. “This meteorite gave us a sense of how that might have happened.”
Jenniskens praised the New Jersey homeowners for collecting pieces of the so-called Hillsborough meteorite and protecting their integrity for scientific research.
“We can actually see that it contains tiny bits of material coming from the original surface of the world where these rocks came from,” he said.
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