Old photographic plates from a 1950s sky survey held a detective mystery: mysterious flashes kept appearing on them. The first clue — the flashes coincided with days of atmospheric nuclear tests. The second clue — the Earth's magnetic field: the stronger the storm raged, the rarer the spots. It was as if the suspect only came out in calm weather. This ruled out the defective film theory: defects don't care about magnetic storms. But particles trapped in invisible traps at satellite altitudes behave exactly that way. Nuclear explosions shook up these particles, making them visible, while solar activity in the form of storms swept them clean away, leaving space empty for days. The old images captured not just defects, but a dance of terrestrial and cosmic weather.
On quiet geomagnetic nights, flashes appeared on 17.4% of plates, but during an extreme storm — only on 2.4%. A storm could sweep away almost everything, leaving the belts empty for days.