Mrs. Hodges had probably drifted of into blissful tranquillity, perhaps assuring herself that the heavens would not descend if she sneaked in a nap. But the universe seems to know about a famous law named after an otherwise obscure person named Murphy because a piece of the heavens promptly descended, three pounds of it to be exact, and crashed through the Hodge's roof, through the living room ceiling, then bounced off a console radio and took up residence on Mrs. Hodge's left thigh. Many of us have seen a bright flash streak across the night sky. But they are not stars at all, but meteors, the debris of the solar system. A meteor is a solid icy or rocky body, heated to incandescence by its passage through Earth's upper atmosphere.
Meteors heat up the same way the space shuttle or other spacecraft do when they re-enter the Earth.
The meteors attain entry speeds of 20 or 30 kilometers per second, and get hot enough to begin to vaporize. The trail of evaporating gas emits light, making the glow that we see. The Earth may be hit by 100 million meteors every day, about one hundred tons of them. Of these, only about 500 make it through the atmosphere each year, and of these, only about 10 are found. Most meteors are tiny grains of material, rarely larger than a marble, and burn up completely in the atmosphere.