Is There a Santa?
As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests,
and with research help from that renowned scientific journal SPY
Magazine, I am pleased to present this scientific inquiry into the
existence of Santa Claus.
* * *
1) No known species of reindeer can fly, but there are 300,000 species
of organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects
and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer which only
Santa has ever seen.
2) There are 2 billion children (defined as persons under 18) in the
world; However, since Santa doesn't appear to handle Muslim, Hindu,
Jewish, or Buddhist children, that reduces the workload down to 15% of
the original total - 378 million according to the Population Reference
Bureau. At an average census rate of 3.5 children per household, that's
only 91.8 million homes. One presumes that there is at least one good
child in each.
3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different
time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to
west. This works out to 822.6 visits per second. That is to say that
for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a
second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the
stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat
whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into
the sleigh, and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these
91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which we
know to be false but will accept for the purpose of these calculations),
we are talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5
million miles, not counting stops to do what most us of must do at least
once every 31 hours, plus eating, etc.
This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000
times the speed of sound. For purpose of comparison, the fastest
man-made vehicle (the Ulysses space probe) moves at a poky 27.4 miles
per second. A conventional reindeer can run 15 miles per hour at the
most.
4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming
that each child gets nothing more than a medium-size gift set of Lego
building blocks (about two pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons,
not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land,
conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting
that flying reindeer exist (see point 1), can fly very quickly (see
point 2), and can pull ten times the normal amount, we cannot do the job
with eight, or for that matter, nine reindeer. We would need 214,200
reindeer. This increases the payload — not counting the weight of the
sleigh — to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison, this is four times the
weight of Queen Elizabeth II.
5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates an enormous
air resistance. This would heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as
a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of
reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy. Per second.
Each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously,
exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating a deafening sonic boom
in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within
.00426 seconds. Santa, meanwhile, would be subjected to forces 17,500
times greater than normal gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems slim)
would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
In conclusion, if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve,
he's dead now.
Email: aaronsteinmetz@yahoo.com
