Date Received: 11 Dec 1997
As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from
that renowned scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - we are pleased
to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.
- 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.
- There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT
since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish & 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 good
child in each.
- Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with. This is due 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/second. This is to
say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has .001 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/household,
a total trip of 75.5 million miles; not counting stops to do what most of us
must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding & etc. So Santa's sleigh
must be moving at 650 miles/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/second. A conventional reindeer can
run, tops, 15 miles/hour.
- The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element.
Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2
lb.), 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 lb. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see #1) could pull 10
TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with 8, or even 9 reindeer. We
need 214,200. This increases the payload - not counting the weight of the
sleigh - to 353,430 tons. This is four times the weight of the ocean-liner
Queen Elizabeth.
- 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles/second creates enormous air
resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft
reentering 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 vaporized
within 0.00426 of a second. Meanwhile, Santa, will be subjected to centrifugal
forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-lb. Santa (seems ludicrously
slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 lb. of force. In
conclusion, if Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead
now.