By Chris Cosci

This Fourth of July, people throughout the United States will ooh and ahh over dazzling displays of fireworks. On that very same day, scientists around the world will ooh and ahh over something entirely unrelated to the Americans' celebration: a large chunk of metal is scheduled to collide with an orbiting comet.

It wouldn't be surprising for people to have concerns about two massive objects colliding above our planet. Will this cause anything to crash down to Earth? If so, shouldn't someone have tried to stop this event from happening? Regardless of such concerns, the scientists have no intention of stopping the metal object from hitting the comet. After all, that's why they sent the object up there in the first place.

As it turns out, scientists have planned this collision as part of a project to learn more about comets. The metal object is what the scientists are calling an impactor. The plan is to release the impactor into the path of the Tempel 1, a comet with a radius of 1.9 miles traveling at roughly 23,000 miles per hour. The impactor, weighing in at over 800 pounds, will be propelled from a small spacecraft and will use hi-tech sensors to guide it toward the comet. Given the likely high cost of this impactor, it should come as no surprise that it's expected to completely disintegrate on contact, leaving behind a sizeable crater in the comet.

Scientists are hoping to find materials buried beneath the surface of the comet that would answer some questions not only about the creation of comets, but the creation of our entire solar system. If successful, the project will provide scientists with an abundance of data to work with. But who cares about all that? Let's talk about the important question: how can people watch the crash?

Any amateur stargazer with a telescope can catch a glimpse of the festivities. NASA's Web site details where the event will occur and where people can find the best view, which appears to be somewhere in the center of the Pacific Ocean. While the viewing locations may be limited, at least the visuals promise to be exciting. According to the Web site, "Before impact, you will see a very dim fuzzball through a telescope. After impact, we expect that you will see a brighter fuzzball through the telescope." That's the kind of natural wonder that can't be duplicated without a tennis ball and some lighter fluid.

For those people not in the optimal viewing area, NASA will broadcast images from nearby spacecrafts on television and the Internet. While there is certainly much to be learned from this project, one has to wonder if dropping a large object in the path of an even larger comet is the wisest decision. After all, nature has a way of not behaving the way we want it to.

NASA's Web site contains plenty of documents claiming that there is no reason for concern. One report admits that the impact will cause a slight change in the comet's orbit, but insists that the change is so small that it won't be noticed. Of course, this is coming from the same people who once crashed a $125 million spacecraft into Mars because they forgot to convert calculations to the metric system.

Nonetheless, the scientific explanations do provide a little reassurance -- except for one report that inexplicably describes how a similar impact could substantially affect the trajectory of a smaller comet. Instead of just saying, "This project is safe," the report cites an example of how the same impulse being delivered to Tempel 1 would be sufficient enough to considerably divert the path of a comet with a diameter of only 125 meters. That's like doctors telling their patients how safe a certain surgery is, only to start yapping about how it could kill skinnier people.

Still, scientists are confident that this project will have no life-threatening effect on the comet or its path. There's just one more thing that concerns me. The name for this project is "Deep Impact." As a general rule, I think it's a bad idea to give a project the same name as a disaster film. For a project like this, it's even worse to share a name with a movie about a comet that crashes into Earth and causes destructive tidal waves. I guess it could have been worse. They could have called it "Armageddon."