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The beauty of a shooting star crossing the night sky is undeniable, but while for some people this is very romantic, for others it just suggests a bad omen. The perception of the shooting star in different parts of the world is both varied and suggestive. Thus, westerners commonly make a wish when they see a falling star, while in other parts of the globe, any shooting star tells people that someone has passed away. Yet, even if popular beliefs give different explanations to these cosmic phenomena, they have a very reasonable and easy to understand scientific background. The fact is that we incorrectly call it a shooting star, as the thing in itself has nothing of the attributes of a real star. A shooting star is a meteoroid, or some form of debris that enters Earth's atmosphere and gets on fire. The friction of the air masses, the ram pressure and the presence of the oxygen associated with the incredible speed of the meteoroid cause the star-like appearance. Thus, the shooting star often doesn't even get to touch the ground as it burns completely in the atmosphere. Big-sized meteoroids may not burn completely and they fall on the making smaller or larger craters. Such falling stars are known as meteors. Scientists can identify the chemical structure of a shooting star by observing the light specter during the descent as well as the trajectory through the atmosphere. Though noticeable with the naked eye only at night, meteoroids and meteors have been reported during the day, but this time they can be identified only by radio signals, with the sunlight making them very difficult to spot otherwise. Thus, scientists have concluded that the weight and structure of a shooting star can vary a lot from snowball lightness to metal heaviness. A special kind of shooting star here is the one that passes through an atmosphere sector and gets out into space again to continue its speedy course. A shooting star with a high burning intensity is called a fireball and the measurements are made by comparing the light intensity of the meteor with the light normally reflected by a planet. As beautiful as it may look, a shooting star can often cause great damage on Earth's surface if it is not totally combusted during the passage through the atmosphere. Past collisions proved devastating for ecosystems, with great flora and fauna damage; should such a shooting star fall in a city, the effect would be that of a bomb dropping, with a higher or lower destructive force depending on the size of the meteor.
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