US Air Force turns to UK for satelitte protection

Researchers are developing equipment that could prevent wide scale mass communications blackouts, caused by huge plasma clouds from the sun.

These huge clouds of hot gas, which can travel at speeds of more than 600-miles-per- second, can knock out communications and power supplies to an entire region.

Birmingham University has been funded by the US Air Force to build specialist equipment, launched in to space, to find out more about the plasma clouds in order to predict when they will affect the earth so their interference can by reduced.