True Shooting Stars;

If you"ve ever gazed up at the night sky (and lets just admit it, we all have) you"ve probably wished upon a shooting star (which are really meteors burning up after entering Earth"s atmosphere) at some point in your life, but shooting stars actually do exist, and they"re as rare as one in 100 million.

In 2005, astronomers discovered the first "hypervelocity" star careening out of the galaxy into interstellar space at nearly 530 miles per second or almost 2 million miles per hour, which is 10 times faster than ordinary star movement. They were first theorized to exist in 1988, but not confirmed for several more years. The theory was that binary star systems at a galaxy"s center would occasionally wander too close to the supermassive black hole looming there, which would disrupt their orbital dance. While one of the pair was captured by the black hole, the other would be sent rocketing off at incredible speeds.

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