And conductive particles != charged particles. It seems they're using different kinds of particle counts for the mass of the Van Allen belts and the mass of th

And conductive particles != charged particles. It seems they're using different kinds of particle counts for the mass of the Van Allen belts and the mass of the satellites and meteors. The high-energy dissociated subatomic particles in the Van Allen belts do not form from decaying meteorites or satellites unless you put those meteorites and satellites in a particle accelerator. And further, the 'textbook undergraduate physics problem' of finding the magnetic field outside a conductive shell assumes that infinitesimal concentrations of aerosolized conductive particles form a fully conductive shield. Yes, I understand that when heated to a plasma these concentrations matter, but it's disingenuous to compare them in the way the article does.