Susan  Baldwin, age 10, of Sarasota, Florida, for her question:

What makes a star fall?

Young persons sometimes get scared when they see a bright spark streak across the sky, especially if someone calls it a falling star. After all, it would be very sad if the stars really did fall one by one from the sky. Actually there is no cause for alarm. The same old stars were right there in their places a thousand years ago    and they will be there a thousand years from now. That so called faring star eras a meteor, perhaps no bigger than a grain of sand.

Out in the Solar System, there are zillions of these mini meteors, also some pea sized meteors and a few giant meteors as big as boulders. For ages and ages they zoom through the vast spaces between the planets. Iiow¬ever, some of these little space travelers collide with the earth and bash onto the moon. When they get close to the earth, the force of gravity pulls them down, down, hundreds of miles through the atmosphere. This fall through the air mattes a meteor glow like a star, though actually it is just a small piece of stone or metal.