Did a New Jersey meteorite really have ‘life’s building blocks’?
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Gibber! Gibber!
Chugley
Did a New Jersey meteorite really have ‘life’s building blocks’?
Published 26 Aug, 2026
Amino acids found on a meteorite in New Jersey have been hyped as relevant to the origin of life, but what was found could never help life arise.
ID 29406222 | Meteorite © Ig0rzh | Dreamstime.com (not actual meteorite)
Observers in the northeastern USA saw a “fireball streaking across the daytime sky” on 16 July 2024. It broke apart about 35 km (22 mi) above Earth. One fragment weighing about 1 kg (2 lb) crashed through the roof of a home in Hillsborough, New Jersey. Fortunately, no one was hurt.1
The careful homeowners quickly patched their roof. Wearing gloves, they collected the fragments and dust in clean glass jars before giving them to NASA scientists. Their care reduced contamination, although it could not eliminate it. Some nylon from the roof and carpet contaminated the sample.
Amino acids
Even so, the meteorite contained an impressive variety of amino acids—the building blocks of proteins.2 However, many were amino acids that are not used in proteins by living things. Also, many amino acids found in living creatures were not found in the sample.
This is evidence that they really were extraterrestrial. But this also shows that natural processes will not produce exclusively biological compounds. Instead, a jumble of chemicals is produced that would be no good for forming life.
The most abundant amino acid was glycine, the simplest amino acid. Although glycine is not especially common in proteins, it is one of the easiest amino acids to form by natural chemical reactions. This also supports an extraterrestrial origin
While many reports claim that these meteorites show that life’s building blocks can be formed naturally, the opposite is true. After all, the evidence that they were extraterrestrial is that they don’t match those in living creatures. But this means that natural processes would not produce the wide variety of amino acids in proteins.
Left- and right-handed
Many amino acids occurred as almost equal mixtures of ‘left-handed’ and ‘right-handed’ forms—a racemate. Living organisms almost exclusively use the left-handed forms. (Glycine is the only amino acid that has no handedness—that is, it is achiral. This is due to its simple structure.)
These racemates were good evidence that the amino acids were genuinely produced naturally. But they also show why chemical evolution—life from non-living chemicals—doesn’t work. That is, natural processes don’t produce the exclusively one-handed building blocks required for life. (See creation.com/chirality-hub.)
Chain termination
One important result received little attention in news reports. The meteorite also contained large amounts of formic acid and acetic acid.
A major step in chemical evolution would be joining amino acids together into peptides and proteins. However, these simple acids can terminate a growing peptide chain. In the Hillsborough meteorite, there were roughly 400 times as many molecules of formic plus acetic acid as of glycine. This is further evidence of extraterrestrial origin. But it is also fatal to chemical evolution. Such a mixture would not favour the formation of long protein chains unless the acids were first removed or converted into less reactive compounds. (See creation.com/polymer.)
Conclusion
Popular reports talk about the ‘building blocks of life’ having been found in meteorites (and asteroids). But real science shows they are incapable of ‘building’ anything.
- Many are the wrong kind of molecules.
- They are not exclusively one-handed.
- They are grossly contaminated with chemicals that would stop the formation of the essential large molecules of life.
References and Notes
- Strickland, A., Meteorite that crashed into a New Jersey home contains ‘extraterrestrial’ amino acids, yahoo.com, 15 Jul 2026
- Peter Jenniskens, P. et al., Meteor over New York City: Brines in a primitive CM asteroid, Science Advances 12(29), 15 Jul 2026.
Related Articles
- Did life come from outer space?
- Panspermia theory burned to a crisp: bacteria couldn’t survive on meteorite
- Were life’s ‘building blocks’ found on Bennu?
- Origin of Life, Chirality problem, hub page
- Origin of life: the polymerization problem
Further Reading
Related Media
- Did life come from outer space?
- Panspermia theory burned to a crisp: bacteria couldn’t survive on meteorite
- Were life’s ‘building blocks’ found on Bennu?
- Origin of Life, Chirality problem, hub page
- Origin of life: the polymerization problem
Why Life Couldn’t Have Evolved from Non-Living Chemicals
Atheists must believe that living creatures evolved from non-living chemicals, via a process commonly called chemical evolution (aka abiogenesis). But real scientific laws, especially of chemistry and information theory, refute this. Chemical processes go in the opposite direction required. For example, life needs exclusively ‘one-handed’ molecules, while random chemistry produces an equal mix of left and right-handed molecules. Also, little molecules in water don’t combine to form the needed big molecules; rather any big molecules break down to little molecules. Yet another problem is the wrong kinds of reactions, which chemical evolutionists avoid by buying pure reactants. Chemical evolutionists also can’t explain the encyclopedic information content needed for enzymes, DNA, and molecular machines essential for life. Join physical chemist Dr Jonathan Sarfati for a discussion of the building blocks of life, and how everything we know about chemistry argues against the imagined chemical start to evolution.May 28, 2026WatchWhy God did NOT create aliensThe search for alien life. Discover why the idea of aliens raises major scientific and biblical problems—but highlights the greatness of the Creator.Apr 24, 2025WatchAmazing Robotics in All Living CellsDiscover the smallest motor in the universe—an astonishing molecular machine that powers all living cells with atomic precision. Explore why ATP synthase, with its near-perfect efficiency, challenges