A 1-kilogram black stone fell from above the bed, and a man survived the accident because he did not sleep in. "The whole house was shaking at that moment."

On the morning of July 16, 2024, in an ordinary residential house in Hillsborough, New Jersey, USA.

The homeowner was working from home when he suddenly heard a loud bang, and the house shook violently.

After regaining his senses, he walked into the master bedroom and was greeted by a scene of total mess. Ash-like black dust filled the room, and a strong sulfur smell permeated the air. Looking up, there was a hole smashed through the ceiling above the bed, with black gravel scattered on the pillow and bed sheet.

The hole smashed through the roof | Reference [1]

The total mass of the gravel and dust recovered later is about 1.35 kilograms. That means, before it broke through the roof and shattered again when hitting the ground, the intact stone was roughly the weight of a 1.5-liter bottle of mineral water.

"Luckily I didn't sleep in", the unnamed homeowner recalled.

The homeowner and his wife could not figure out the cause of the accident at first, until they saw the news that a daytime meteor streaked across the sky above New York that morning, and then realized that the chaos in the bedroom might come from outer space.

In the picture on the right, the green line is the projected trajectory of the meteor | Reference [2]

What is rare is that they did not flip the gravel with bare hands, but resisted their curiosity and recorded the scene first without causing any damage. Then they got in touch with Mike Hankey, an astronomy enthusiast from the American Meteor Society. Following his advice, the homeowner and his wife put on gloves, wrapped the black gravel and dust little by little with aluminum foil, and sealed them in a glass container. The weather forecast said there would be rain that night, so they repaired the roof before the rain fell to prevent rainwater from seeping in.

Part of the sealed debris | Reference [3]

Realizing the preciousness of the extraterrestrial object, the two spent weeks cleaning it continuously. They even used tape to pick up tiny particles on the wall, and bought a new vacuum cleaner to suck up the cosmic particles on the carpet. Every discovery was listed, marked and preserved (these two are absolute Judgers in MBTI, for sure).

The collected materials were later handed over to a professional laboratory. The homeowner and his wife also kept a low profile and did not disclose the adventure of finding meteorite fragments at home to more people.

On July 15, 2026, exactly two years after the meteor streaked across the New York sky, the research team published the analysis results of the sample in *Science Advances*.

It got its official name, the Hillsborough meteorite, named after the place where it fell.

Fragments of the Hillsborough meteorite | Reference [1]

The reason why researchers can extract rich information from it is thanks to the homeowner and his wife's meticulous sampling and proper sealing before. Their operations effectively reduced surface environmental pollution and weathering, and fully preserved the original chemical characteristics of the meteorite.

Overall, this is a CM1/2 type breccia dominated by CM2, mixed with a small amount of CM1 debris that has experienced stronger aqueous alteration. Electron microscopy and elemental analysis found that in some CM1 debris, sodium enrichments are distributed along tiny cracks in dolomite crystals. Researchers speculate based on this that sodium-rich concentrated brine once flowed through the fissures of the parent asteroid, leaving these mineralogical clues.

Clast of C1 in the Hillsborough meteorite | Reference [1]

Scientists also detected amino acids, various carboxylic acids and other soluble organic compounds from the meteorite. The analysis shows that some of these non-protein amino acids most likely have an extraterrestrial origin. Although these substances are not extraterrestrial life, they are raw materials that can participate in chemical reactions related to the origin of life, allowing scientists to get a glimpse of what kind of chemical reactions once occurred inside asteroids in the early solar system.

What is even more incredible is that these black debris also preserve the primitive substances from the early formation of the solar system, which can be traced back to 4.5 billion years ago.

Combined with the orbit of the meteorite and cosmic ray exposure information, the researchers speculate that it may come from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and the Erigone asteroid family is one of the candidate sources. Before becoming an independent meteoroid, it was once part of the surface regolith of a larger celestial body. About 200,000 years ago, the asteroid it belonged to had evolved from the asteroid belt into a near-Earth orbit, shedding a meteoroid weighing about 53 kilograms.

The main asteroid belt | NASA

In 2024, it turned into a dazzling fireball streaking across the sky. One of its fragments finally smashed precisely into a bedroom in New Jersey.

About 44 tons of meteorite material enter the Earth's atmosphere every day, and the vast majority are ablated and vaporized on the way down. Even so, scientists estimate that more than 17,000 meteorites with a mass greater than 50 grams still reach the surface every year across the globe. However, 70% of the Earth is ocean, and there are also large deserts and uninhabited areas on land, so the probability of a meteorite actually hitting a person or a house is extremely low.

But such an unforeseen disaster (and sometimes an unexpected windfall) is not without precedent.

In 1954, Ann Hodges from Alabama, USA, was resting on the sofa. A meteorite weighing about 3.6 kilograms broke through the roof, bounced off the radio, and hit her waist and hip, leaving a large bruise — but she was already very lucky.

For another example, a meteorite shower fell in Costa Rica in 2019, and a 280-gram fragment smashed through a dog kennel right on target. Fortunately, the dog named Rocky inside was unharmed.

Rocky's kennel | Reference [4]

A few years later, this dog kennel was even auctioned at Christie's, and was finally sold for $44,100!

So if you do encounter a falling meteorite one day, under the premise of ensuring safety, I believe the smart you already know what to do.

References:

[1]Peter Jenniskens et al. ,Meteor over New York City: Brines in a primitive CM asteroid.Sci. Adv.12,eaea2105(2026).

[2]https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/astromaterials/nasa-study-of-pristine-meteorite-adds-to-story-of-ancient-asteroids/

[3]https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/lifestyle/its-treasure-science-too-bad-it-came-through-their-roof

[4]https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-10517489/Barking-mad-Dog-house-hit-meteorite-Costa-Rica-fetch-300-000-auction.html

This article is from the WeChat official account "Bringing Science Home" (ID: steamforkids), written by Shanfan, published with authorization from 36Kr.