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That was my reaction as well. That's the point where I decided to stop wasting my time with the article, which is a real pity given that it's the second sentence.

I used to respect Popular Mechanics as the more technical and less overtly pro–military-industrial–complex cousin of Popular Science, but evidently they've fallen victim to the dumbing down of science too - not to mention the sensationalism, as evidenced by the headline.

I searched "swim-floaty" on DuckDuckGo, just in case it was a dialect thing, and amusingly this article is the first result, and seemingly the only one in the page that uses this exact phrasing.

I figured "Belt" is enough of a descriptor/visual, but apparently "swim-floaty" is the better choice of words. Go figure.

Belt is used already for the radiation belts, and I think this is referring to the equatorial toroid where those aren't.

It's popular mechanics. It's meant to get clicks from...a certain type.