Where do falling stars go?

Sometimes we see the so called falling stars spilling over the night sky one after another. We wait, hoping for one to land on the ground. But this never seems to happen. The fact is, most of these bright little buttons burn to ashes high in the air above our heads. These so called stars are really meteors, most of them no bigger than grains of sand.

These tiny space travelers catch fire as they fall through the air, leaving a trail of burning gases which looks like a falling star. As they fall, they burn to powdery ashes which sift slowly down to the earth. Once in a great while, a meteor is too big to burn completely as it falls. It thuds on the ground like a pebble   and we call it a meteorite.