(Bloomberg) — Mama always told me not to look into the sights of the sun. Oh, but Mama, that's where the fun is.
No one understands that Bruce Springsteen song more than William Murtagh. In a small government office near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, Murtagh and other federal employees monitor the sun 24 hours a day, waiting for it to erupt and fling a cloud of superheated, supercharged gas toward Earth.
The Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado, sends alerts to power grids, airlines, oil drillers and even pigeon trainers on the risks of geomagnetic storms that can disrupt communications, electric power, and, yes, perhaps the birds' sense of direction.
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