The answer is “No.” We have come to use the expression “shooting stars” commonly, but we should probably be more correct if we said “shooting rocks,” for the things we refer to commonly as “shooting stars” are more like rocks than anything else. If any of the real stars were to fall into the air surrounding the earth we should all be burned up by the great heat developed long before it actually hit the earth, which it would undoubtedly destroy. The things that fall and leave a streak of light are really only pebbles, stones, rocks or pieces of iron and other substances that fall from some place into the earth’s air belt. When they strike the air at the speed at which they are falling the friction of the air makes a heat that causes them to become luminous, and by far the greater part of them is burned up before they get very near the earth. We call them meteorites. Sometimes, though rarely, one will manage to strike the earth, coming at such great speed and being so large that the air has not been able to burn it up completely, and it will strike the earth and sink deep down into the soil. In most museums can be seen such meteorites that have been dug up after striking the earth. These are constantly falling into the air surrounding the earth, but in the day-time their light is not strong enough to be seen while the sun is shining. Will the Sky Ever Fall Down? No, the sky can never fall down, because it is not made of the kind of things that fall. We have become used to thinking of it as the roof of the earth, a great dome-shaped roof, because in our little way of looking at things we compared the earth and what is above it with the houses in which we live. The sky is just space in which the heavenly bodies revolve in their orbits. We cannot really ever see sky. We see only the sun’s light reflected by the air belt which surrounds the earth. In this air belt are the clouds which do come closer to the land at times than at others, and this is apt to aid in giving us an incorrect impression of this. What Is the Milky Way? The “Galaxy,” or “Milky Way,” as it is popularly called, is a luminous circle extending completely around the heavens. It is produced by myriads of stars, as can be seen when you look at it through a telescope. It divides into two great branches at one point, which travel for some distance separately and then reunite. It has also several branches. At one point it spreads out very widely into a fanlike shape. Why Do They Call It the Milky Way? The stars in the group are so numerous that they present to the naked eye a whiteness like a stream of milk. To produce this effect there are not hundreds of stars, nor thousands of them, but actually millions of them.