The Santa Claus Theory

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Martz

Staff member
May 26, 2001
5,707
63
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 by 85% - to 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 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 (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This 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 trips 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 0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75½ million miles; not counting stops to do what most of us must 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 man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second; a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4. The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets no 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 no.1) could pull ten times the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons, or four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5. 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance -this will heat the reindeer up in the same way as spacecraft 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 flame 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 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.


MY REPLY - IN DEFENCE OF SANTA

This really is a hoary old roast chestnut! The problem with this analysis is that it is based on outdated science. As any person of reasonable intellect should know, Newtonian physics, on which the above analysis is based, is outdated; it is the science of the quantum that should be used to assess the Santa phenomenon.

A single electron with the choice of two holes to pass through, seems to pass through both holes at the same time, unless someone is looking, in which case it will pass through one hole or the other. The fact of observing the electron actually affects its behaviour. When we are not looking, each single electron behaves as an infinite number of ghost electrons; only when we look at it is it forced into a single position in space-time.

As I am sure you can now see, this theory also applies to Santa Claus. There is not a single Santa Claus but an infinite number of ghost Santas. These infinite ghost Santas can of course deliver an infinite number of presents of infinite size to an infinite number of good children in no time at all.

This also explains why it is so important that our children go to sleep on Christmas Eve and do not try to see Santa. For, if they did, they would force the ghost Santas into a single moment in space-time and then Newtonian physics as outlined in the note above would apply, and then - POOF - no Santa!

So for the sake of all good children everywhere we should stop broadcasting this tosh. And make absolutely sure your kids are asleep before midnight on Christmas Eve, or you could be responsible for the death of Santa Claus !!!!!!