Shooting Stars ???

So hey, has anyone here ever wondered what shooting stars really are? are they really an actual star that falls from its gravity and shoots across the universe. Or could it be a space craft traveling at astonishing speeds??? I have wondered many times!

Simple. They are space debris burning up as they enter the atmosphere.
or
[Science Fiction]They are Space aliens that forget to put on the breaks to decelerate and therefore their ships burn up in a spectacular light show[/Science Fiction]

[edit on 22-12-2005 by nullster]

I thought that was pretty common knowledge.

As Nullster said, shooting stars are space junk (natural or manmade) burning up as they enter the atmosphere.

www.google.com is your friend. so is wikipedia.

It just seems to me that they are moving too fast to be space junk or such. But I suppose that sounds right.

Originally posted by Kamikazi
It just seems to me that they are moving too fast to be space junk or such. But I suppose that sounds right.

Try falling thousands of miles...you'd be moving pretty quick too.

Some natural junk like micro-asteroids travel tens of thousands of miles per hour. If you watch, some larger shooting stars even break up into different chunks as they burn up. They are also different colors depending on what they are and how they burn.