alt.hn

7/26/2026 at 1:35:03 AM

Alien World Chemistry Found Inside Meteorite That Struck New Jersey Home

 https://www.seti.org/news/alien-world-chemistry-found-inside-meteorite/

by spzx

7/26/2026 at 3:50:33 AM

The real jackpot here is how this large chunk happened to impact a home belonging to an astute and prepared individual:

  He then immediately preserved and documented the entire scene using disposable gloves and aluminum foil to place the meteorite fragments in glass jars.
I can think of many diverse reactions to a meteor strike, but even NASA is singing the praises of this guy and his quick thinking.

by ButlerianJihad

7/26/2026 at 10:16:04 AM

> The real jackpot here is how this large chunk happened to impact a home belonging to an astute and prepared individual:

Maybe chunks hit many people, but you only hear about the ones who are prepped and ready.

by lelanthran

7/26/2026 at 1:31:16 PM

I see a parody of preppers in there.

„Your bug out backpack is not enough, you need space bug out backpack”.

by ozim

7/26/2026 at 8:08:12 PM

I've seen enough sci-fi to know I shouldn't just grab the dang thing ...

by duxup

7/26/2026 at 4:39:34 AM

[flagged]

by alex1138

7/26/2026 at 6:16:24 AM

[flagged]

by alex1138

7/26/2026 at 6:53:59 AM

"Dumb" is correct.

Hacknews is like an organism, and you have been subject to the immune system.

by scrollop

7/26/2026 at 6:43:51 AM

Next time, try a clever joke.

by floren

7/26/2026 at 7:04:49 AM

Indeed

by Cider9986

7/26/2026 at 8:19:27 AM

Did someone pay him for the rare meteorite? At least enough to fix the roof?

Who should one contact if this happens?

by jimnotgym

7/26/2026 at 10:05:04 AM

In the US, if a meteorite lands on your property, it's yours and you can sell or donate it as you please. This homeowner probably made a decent amount on the sale, especially with the emphasis on immediate preservation.

by crooked-v

7/26/2026 at 5:02:44 PM

> In the US, if a meteorite lands on your property, it's yours and you can sell or donate it as you please.

Does this happen often in the US?

I mean often enough that folks happen to know the legality of it?

In which case I find it extremely frightening that one could be sitting on their porch, minding their own business, browsing HN, and then get unexpectedly head-shotted by a meteorite.

by herodoturtle

7/26/2026 at 9:14:21 PM

According to this article, we know of three people who have been hit by meteorites, all non-fatally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylacauga_(meteorite)

Not sure if we should count Tunguska, which killed at least three people.

by pavel_lishin

7/26/2026 at 5:16:25 PM

It happens at the same probability as anywhere else on earth.

by jlarocco

7/26/2026 at 8:17:30 PM

Is this actually true? Could it depend on latitude?

by jjmarr

7/26/2026 at 6:30:19 PM

Apologies for the ambiguity, I was referring to the selling or donating of meteorites - and only because I've never heard of such a thing in my part of the world.

by herodoturtle

7/26/2026 at 1:59:03 PM

someone recently SOLD a t-rex skeleton for $50 MILLION (61% complete)

so you should be able to sell meteorites that land on your property

only thing you can't own/sell is NASA Moon Rocks

by ck2

7/26/2026 at 8:00:34 PM

What if it’s moon rock from a meteorite? How would they know?

by hammock

7/26/2026 at 5:59:09 PM

And milk crates

"National dairy. All other use prohibited!"

by qup

7/26/2026 at 3:21:09 PM

>Who should one contact if this happens?

If you ever watched Hardcore Pawn it looks like they would buy just about anything for the right price :)

by fuzzfactor

7/26/2026 at 12:03:06 PM

Everybody knows that. You contact NASA. Then a black helicopter will pick you up, bring you to an airbase and fly you straight to the white house, where you will be introduced to the actual truth, while a team of very excited scientists with biohazard suits praise and examine the artefact. If you're still sceptical, they will take you to a large hidden hangar in the middle of the desert and show you around.

by lagrange77

7/26/2026 at 3:22:45 PM

You forgot the part where Brent Spiner shows up and tells you they have one and asks if you want to meet it.

by reactordev

7/26/2026 at 3:48:24 PM

I guess I'm not be reading the same type of science fiction.

You contact NASA because you found a meteorite with clear signs of alien life, a black helicopter will pick you up, you get put in a dark cell, interrogated, and then told to forget all about it or G-Men will disappear your family. You try to sell the news to mass media, but rumours start to spread about you. Your life work get discredited, you lose your job and family, end up wandering the streets in an alcohol daze muttering about aliens.

I guess it depends if you've drank the kool aid about the US government being the good guys, or not.

by sph

7/26/2026 at 12:31:45 PM

Can’t take any US action movie seriously anymore. Not because of plotlines like this, but because they portray the team at the white house as somewhat capable.

You have to suspend your disbelief harder at the 8 o’clock news nowadays.

by spiderfarmer

7/26/2026 at 12:59:26 PM

Watch Don't look up, if you haven't yet, it's brilliant.

by lagrange77

7/26/2026 at 1:46:55 PM

I did. It’s depressingly realistic.

by spiderfarmer

7/26/2026 at 9:23:21 AM

The Vogon hyperspace development council.

by Razengan

7/26/2026 at 10:26:28 AM

Now you just need to find their contact details. Beware the Leopard!

by decimalenough

7/26/2026 at 11:08:22 AM

[dead]

by vee-kay

7/26/2026 at 12:15:54 PM

its like we can explore the universe from our living room

by accountrequired

7/26/2026 at 1:35:04 PM

It's like doorstep delivery, but faster and better.

by amelius

7/26/2026 at 5:06:32 AM

"Our cameras in Northford, Connecticut, and Douglassville, Pennsylvania, as well as a doorbell camera in Wayne, New Jersey, captured the meteor, and from that we measured its trajectory... The path traced back to low in the asteroid belt."

I don't doubt it, but that's an astounding trajectory estimation...

by fractallyte

7/26/2026 at 5:14:53 AM

Desert Fireball Network, and less public precursor projects have been doing this for a while now:

* https://dfn.gfo.rocks/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Fireball_Network

* https://pawsey.org.au/researchers/desert-fireball-network-te...

by defrost

7/26/2026 at 6:50:38 AM

From the wikipedia link:

> The dark flight trajectory of a meteoroid is significantly affected by the atmospheric winds, especially by the jet stream. As a result, the meteorite fall position can be shifted by up to several kilometers compared to a scenario with no winds.

That network is mostly interested in where it falls, not where it came from. A few degrees for finding an origin is a huge variation.

by imoverclocked

7/26/2026 at 6:55:24 AM

Planetary scientists are motivated to physically examine freshly fallen near pristine samples, yes. They are also keenly interested in origins, intra or extra solar system, relationships to known showers et al.

The less public precursors were and still have an interest in both projected targets and sources.

by defrost

7/26/2026 at 6:00:56 AM

This is absolutely trivial as long as any fixed ground objects are visible in a camera and does not at all require some sub-pixel precision.

by anovikov

7/26/2026 at 8:51:22 AM

It's trivial to draw a line between some fixed points and extrapolate back to an origin if there's no external forces acting on the asteroid. But there is - planetary gravity, the moon, potentially the sun heating one side of it, atmospheric wind, weather, etc make a big difference. That makes it harder.

by onion2k

7/26/2026 at 9:11:17 AM

That's basics of meteor observation. As long as camera didn't move, you can plot the track against the stars and time is known. Then with two tracks from different locations, orbit is determined.

by anovikov

7/26/2026 at 9:40:37 AM

Also, a typical consumer camera is going to struggle (even with the best analysis!) to have visual accuracy within even a few degrees of true (due to everything from high compression ratios in post processing to shitty optical properties in the actual camera) and that makes a probability cone that is pretty large.

Still better than nothing, though!

by lazide

7/26/2026 at 11:49:08 AM

building a WCS model (pixel XY <-> ray vectors) of a camera is a solved science. Of course you can never expect it to be rectangular.

by anovikov

7/26/2026 at 3:02:21 PM

No kidding, that is what I was referring too. Precision for a typical doorbell camera is going to be several minutes of angle at best, which is my point.

by lazide

7/26/2026 at 3:12:13 PM

Oh well several arcminutes is excellent. Yes this is best case.

by anovikov

7/26/2026 at 4:51:47 AM

Scene one of a Steven Spielberg movie.

by andrewstuart

7/26/2026 at 2:47:05 PM

You'll know it's a Spielberg movie if there was a shot of clouds preceding the meteorite shot first.

by dylan604

7/26/2026 at 6:54:41 AM

If you follow disclosure, scene 1 occured a long, long time ago...

by scrollop

7/26/2026 at 12:52:44 PM

> Researchers found preserved bits from near the surface of the original asteroid where it experienced concentrated salty fluids

Are we sure the guy who picked it up didn't just wash it with some sort of detergent after it cooled off?

by ur-whale

7/26/2026 at 2:41:47 PM

No, many of the the molecules are too unusual. More details:

The amino acids have a central C (Carbon) that is connected to 4 parts, a COOH (acid), a NH2 (amino) and H (Hydrogen) and a R (rest, that is a polite way to say whatever). [I'm ignoring some less usual cases.]

The 4 parts can be arengad in two ways, "L" and "D" that are mirrors of each other. Living things (and corpses) almost have only the "L" version. But in the meteorite they found a 50% and 50% mix of L and D that is a clear thing that they were made by chemical reactions instead of living thing.

Also, in living things (and corpses) the possible/usual R are like 30. The meteorite has a few of the usual ones, and also a few unusual ones that is another clear thing that they were made by chemical reactions instead of living thing.

Also, the R they found can be explained by the expected chemical reactions on a meteorite. I don't understand the details, but IIUC there is HCN (Cyanide) and in some conditions it likes to react with itself and make the stuff they found.

So unless the guy is a mad scientist making weird experiments in his attic that are not very useful to rule the word, it's probably a mix made in the meteorite by chemical reactions.

by gus_massa

7/26/2026 at 12:21:23 PM

> Only one was recovered because it hit a house.

You lost me there.

Is recovery possible only if a house is hit??

by chrisjj

7/26/2026 at 12:52:00 PM

From what I understand about this story, the homeowner had the presence of mind to immediately attempt to preserve the meteorite, which is what made subsequent analysis possible.

Presumably other fragments landing outdoors with no one around taking similar steps to preserve them, even if they were to be recovered, would not be as valuable for study because of their exposure to the natural environment of Earth.

by alt219

7/26/2026 at 12:53:11 PM

No? It's obvious the meaning is that most meteorites will never be found because they're tiny and no one witnesses where they land. If it hits a house you know where it landed.

by xingped

7/26/2026 at 3:46:19 PM

Not tiny. This is specifically about the largest.

by chrisjj

7/26/2026 at 4:27:50 PM

The point stands regardless of size: it's not likely to be noticed unless it hits something that someone would pay attention to.

by stronglikedan

7/26/2026 at 5:36:12 PM

And that need not be just a house, I'd say.

by chrisjj

7/26/2026 at 12:23:23 PM

[dead]

by thisisauserid

7/26/2026 at 3:40:36 PM

[dead]

by fllkfsalkdsfds

7/26/2026 at 10:29:16 AM

Browsing that site, The SETI Institute appears to have expanded beyond its original goal of finding extraterrestrial intelligence into astrobiology and more. Perhaps the first attempts at detecting alien radio signals hoped too much?

I have little doubt that, given the infinite size of the universe, that extraterrestrial intelligence (of some sort) exists, the question is whether we will ever detect it... It perhaps even exists as close to us as Europa, should we attempt a landing there...

by pcrh

7/26/2026 at 1:15:07 PM

Detecting radio signals never made much sense to me.

Even a few light years away, it’s almost infeasible to build a radio transmitter that could be detected above the noise floor. The amount of energy you’d need would be absurdly wasteful.

by Enginerrrd

7/26/2026 at 2:26:46 PM

Wasteful by whose standards?

If you’re an alien civilization with several dyson spheres, surely at some point you’d have sufficient energy/resources even for such a “hopeless” science-y project, right?

by msdz