How often do falling stars, fall?

Question

How often do they fall, and how often is it possible for the human eye to see it fall?

Answer 1

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Stars don't fall! Those are meteors!

Answer 2

Those aren't stars, they're meteors. Actually, their meteorites. Very small pieces of a meteor... not a star. Meteorites range in size from a grain of sand to a small pebble... they are very small.

Ancients called them "shooting stars" because they have about the same size when you look at them, when they obviously are way off in size.

Answer 3

"Falling stars" are not stars at all, but are meteors, small particles from outer space which burn up on entering the Earth's atmosphere. Meteors can be seen any clear night from a dark site. They are more frequent after midnight, when you can see perhaps ten per hour. They are also more frequent during meteor showers, when the Earth passes through debris fields left by comets or asteroids.

Answer 4

ugh, okay since I can see you are obviously not on the gifted side of your class, he goes. Those are not falling stars. Those are rocks and space junk which burn up in th atmosphere. If there is a rock in space it is called a meteor, if it is in the atmosphere, it is a meteoroid and on the ground is meteorite. So, these rocks and sand and space junk get pulled in to earth, then they burn up in the immense friction and it looks like a star is falling. How old are you? I am just wondering because if you are at or above 10 years old then I would suggest some tutoring because it is just common sense. I mean...what the h**l?

Answer 5

Only once. What you see is the meteor burning up in the atmosphere. Or if something is still left when it hits the ground, we call that a meteorite. Regardless, we never see the same shooting star more than once.

There are meteor showers that occur at the same time each year. And they have predictions as to how many shooting stars you might see in an hour. But you still only see a shooting star once.  

Answer 6

You can see shooting stars every night.  The Perseids are past their prime, but the shower isn't over.  One third of the meteors i saw at the Perseid peak were non perseids.  And, there are showers here and there all year.

Answer 7

Stars do not fall. If they did, I'd be worried as to whether the Sun will ever fall. I think you are referring to meteors.  

Answer 8

They fall when Chuck Norris tells them to fall. If he wants you to see it, you will. If you complain, he will give you a roundhouse kick that will send you to the dark side of the Sun.

Answer 9

Well, they're not stars - if another star hit the general neighbourhood, let alone the planet, you'd know about it - for about a nanosecond before you got flashfried ;)

What you're seeing is a meteor - a fragment of rock or dust or metal, mostly from comet trails or asteroid debris. While they're in space, they're called meteoroids. The falling part you see - which is definitely visible to the human eye, in fact, a beautiful meteor shower called the Perseids just finished - is called a meteor, and if a fragment manages to survive the fall, it's called a meteorite.

The Perseids, incidentally, are debris from the tail of the comet Swift-Tuttle. It's basically a cloud of dust that Earth periodically moves through, left by the comet.

Answer 10

millions of tons of space dust/rock fall on the earth every single day...

they happen pretty d**n regularly, but the world is a big place, and you have to be fairly close to see the smaller ones, which translates to it being a somewhat rare event for a person to see (you're almost garunteed to see them a few times over in your life tho)

if you live in the city where there's alot of light pollution, the rarity of seeing one climbs. if you live out in the sticks, it falls.

btw i'd ignore the smart-assish remarks about falling stars.... perhaps they live somewhere where that term isn't used to describe meteors.... (around here they are called shooting stars or falling stars....)