An anonymous reader writes: "It's dawn on Friday 2 September 1859 and the sky above the Bahamas is pulsing with red and green light, bright enough to read a newspaper by. Electricity surges through telegraph cables in Europe and the US, shocking operators who are sending messages and causing their equipment to burst into flames. The cause of this mayhem just over 150 years ago? None other than the Sun, which hours earlier had belched out a plume of charged particles that streamed across space before smashing into the magnetic shield that surrounds Earth, generating a maelstrom of magnetic fields and electric currents." Ever thought the weather up in space could make your gadgets blow up?? Nope, me neither. This interview is a brilliant article with the Space Weather Research unit that looks at how predicitng space weather is a minefield — and how the solar system could have a serious affect on infrastructure