Only in Hollywood are meteorites red and glowing when they hit the
ground and then release this weird black glob of ooze that will
eventually eat an unsuspecting farmer and grow to terrorize the local
populace. Hint to stopping it: They don't like cold.

Most meteors plunge through Earth's atmosphere so quickly they don't
have time to really heat up after being in the deep cold of space for
so long, so that is one way investigators know if they have a real
meteorite on their hands or not.

The debris from those two recent satellite collisions will be up in space
for a long time. But of course this won't stop the so-called news media
or the Internet from going nuts every time something falls from the
sky now.

I'm willing to bet most of the debris from those satellites is small enough
that most of it won't survive the plunge to Earth when it does finally
start coming down. Where it will be a threat is to other satellites in
Earth orbit, of course.