Is there really a Santa ???
IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?
1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300 000 species of
living 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 (persons under 18) in the world. But since
Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist
children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million
according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of
3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes
there's at least one 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
(which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is
to say that for each Christian household with children, Santa has 1/823rd
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, of course, we know to
be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are
now talking about.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million
miles, not counting stops to do what most of us do at least once every 31
hours, plus feeding and etc.
This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3 000
times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest manmade
vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per
second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 35 miles per hour.
4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming
that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 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" (see point #1) could
pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight or nine.
We need 214 200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting
the weight of the sleigh - to 353 430 tons. Again, for comparison - this
is four times the weight of the QE II.
5) 353 000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as
spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer
will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In
short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the
reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The
entire reindeer team will be vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second.
Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17 500.06 times
greater than gravity. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously 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.
