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There are large holes in the Earth’s magnetic field over the Atlantic and the Arctic, indicating that the north and south poles may be getting ready to reverse positions in a magnetic flip. This would produce a period of chaos, when compasses no longer point north, migrating animals head in the wrong direction and satellites are burned up by solar radiation. There have already been recent cases where migrating birds ended up in strange places, far from their regular destinations. The speed of the change has surprised scientists.
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The Washington Post publishes a yearly contest in which readers are asked to supply new meanings for old words and create new ones. Some of these ought to become part of our vocabularies for 2003! Keep reading to find out this year’s winning entries.
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62% of Americans over age 53 have anosmia (no sense of smell) or hyposmia (a diminished sense of smell). They can’t always taste what they’re eating, which can be dangerous in cases of food poisoning. They also can’t smell smoke or leaking gas. This can be genetic or caused by viruses, chemical exposure, head injuries, nasal polyps, neurological diseases or Alzheimer’s. Claire Murphy has found that the loss of smell among seniors is “much larger than previously appreciated,” at almost 14 million. Men are much more likely to suffer from this than females, but researchers don’t know why.
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Villagers in a village in India think that 20-year-old Raja Wasim (known as Raju) was attacked by the legendary Abominable Snowman, when he went outside to feet the family’s cattle. He heard a strange noise, and when he turned around, he saw a four-foot-tall monster, covered with dense, dark, black hair all over. Raju says, “The is no mistake about what I saw. The monster had the face of a man with monkey-like features. It was four feet tall, but extremely sturdy. It was the Snowman. It pounced at me and I jumped back on the veranda, shouting for help. My uncle and his family rushed to my rescue and the monster lazily walked away. It was hardly frightened by the commotion.”
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