In what sounds like the lunatic designs of a team of mad scientists, physicists are proposing a plan to wipe out the Van Allen radiation belts. Nevermind that we’ve really only just begun to explore and understand the Van Allen belts - those pesky bands of radiation around our planet allegedly serve ’no purpose’, and are choking up Earth’s orbit with radiation that harms people or satellite equipment that travel through them. So, the physicists’ strategy is to use giant radio transmitters on the ground to beam very low frequency (VLF) waves into the belts to break them up...