To warn the Earth of alien dust that is causing havoc on Earth, British researchers are building a space weather detector

Space particles carrying highly charged particles have been responsible for sending a passenger jet spiraling out of control, triggering power cuts, sparking fires, and even rigging elections in some parts of the world.

Among the possible causes of the northern lights, there is the solar wind - which is the electromagnetic force that produces the lights.

The UK has now invested £1.26 million in the development of an early warning system that will be able to detect such surges when they occur from the ground up.

There was an incident in Belgium in 2003 when alien particles penetrated the memory chip of a vote-counting machine and changed the results of the elections.

As early as the election was over, it was suspected that fraud had taken place when there were more votes counted than there were registered voters. The chip was contaminated by space dust according to an inquiry.

As a result of a flight out of control for 23 seconds in 2008 from Singapore to Perth, a third of the passengers on board were injured and the aircraft plummeted 690 feet. A possible cause of the crash was a collision between cosmic rays and flight computers.

Similar incidents occurred in Quebec, Canada, when six million people suffered power outages, and in New York when telegraph lines caught fire.

Solar winds are constantly flowing from the sun, and the Earth's magnetic field protects the planet from them. However, high-powered flares do occasionally appear.

Michael Aspinall, an engineer at Lancaster University working on the space weather detection team, said people could be affected badly by such weather.

'The lack of electricity would disable computers, communication, navigation, and planes. Satellites would also become unreliable, and mobile phones would no longer work,' he stated.

The interaction of solar flares with Earth's atmosphere is not measured by satellites while they monitor the sun's activity. 'Without these ground-level detectors, the UK is flying blind on space weather impacts,' Aspinall said. 

While space weather events can't be prevented, knowing when they're coming can help vulnerable sectors prepare and ensure these events are safely managed.'

Space weather monitors such as these measure 6ft by 6ft and work by detecting charged particles by using helium-3 in a device called a space weather monitor.

Once the system is operational within two years, it is expected to stream information to the Met Office, funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council.