Sue Carol Rupert, of Wichita, Kansas, for her question:
Why do stars fall out of the sky
In one form or another, this is a very popular question, which means that many of you have asked it. if you are one of those not selected, please do not feel sad or mad. You are smart enough to have asked a question good enough to be selected. In that case, you are smart enough to ask another one. Millions of so‑called shooting stars fall every year. And you have just as many chances to send in a winning question. Please try again.
Sue Carol especially wants to know why stars do not fall out of the Big Dipper. This is a thoughtful question. On some nights we see countless so‑called falling stars. Yet when we look up et the familiar starry sky, the same old constellations are always there, each star present and accounted for.
Notice that Andy said so‑called falling stars. In other words, those bright sparks that hoop over the sky are not really falling stars, or even shooting stars. A fair‑sized star is about as big as our sun. And Old Sol is large enough to gobble up a million earths and still have room for dessert. The big blazing stars do not fall out of the sky. In fact, they obey the strict laws of the universe which keep them in their proper places.
A so‑called shooting star is a meteor which has met with a traffic accident. A meteor may be almost any size at all. Most are no bigger than grains of sand. Some are pebble‑sized and some are large boulders weighing many tons.
Until the traffic accident, every meteor is a space traveler. It whizzes along at a fast clip through the empty space of the Solar System. The Solar system consists of the big sun at the center, nine planets with their moons, a number of comets and countless asteroids, Between the planets are millions of miles of empty space. There are plenty of speedways for space traveling meteors,
Even so, they are constantly colliding with the big planets. A meteor as large as a grain of sand may travel the spaceways for countless ages. Some experts say its speed exceeds 20,000 miles an hour. Suddenly, its path takes it near the earth. It feels the pull of the earth's gravity and it is drawn closer and closer.
A few hundred miles above the earth, the meteor meets the air. To us, the air is very thin. To the meteor, used to empty space, it is cram full of molecules, The speed of the falling meteor strikes the air as a match strikes a matchbox. The friction causes heat. The meteor glows with fire. This is the spark we see as a falling star.
Most meteors burn to ashes long before they reach the ground. A meteor of ten pounds or more may be too large to burn up entirely. What remains of it hits the ground and becomes a meteorite.