Santa Claus, Existence Of
2R55
Scientific Inquiry Into The Virginia Postulate
Dirk N. Talasse
Introduction by Roel van der Meulen

19931225
Infinity

Over the years, children have been led to believe that there is a man at
the North Pole called Santa Claus, who, every Christmas, flies to the
inhabited parts of the world on a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and
climbs down chimneys to drop presents, only to be badly traumatized at
a certain age by the announcement that he doesn't really exist.

We have so far taken that non-existence for granted, because it is true
that his existence is highly improbable. But on the other hand, in an
infinite universe everything, however improbable (but finitely improbable),
can exist.

Because the existence, or probability of existence, has never been
investigated properly, that is, scientifically, a bit of theoretical
research has been done and here we present the results.

The main problems people have with Santa existing are that 1) Santa has
flying reindeer; 2) Santa has to visit millions of children but 3) hasn't
got a lot of time to do that in and 4) the sleigh is extremely heavily
loaded. In the following these points will be dealt with and a conclusion
will be drawn.

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 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 (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 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
0.78 miles per 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 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 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 even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This
increases the payload -- not even counting the weight of the sleigh --
to 353,430. Again, for comparison -- this is 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 fashion as
spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of deer
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 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.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Josh,

HAHAHA that was awesome!

Brilliant. I've been trying to find that again for ages now! So good.

Damn. I knew santa was dead.

Yes santa exists, but he is superman.

No...you're wrong...Santa is a MACHINE!!!

Or possibly Santa is a memory of someone (Saint Nick maybe?) who did something nice... this memory has been passed down and has encouraged others to do nice as well.

I plan on telling my kids that when they get older, it's better than saying "yeah, we made him up, sorry."

quote:

Originally posted by Blkmamba:
Or possibly Santa is a memory of someone (Saint Nick maybe?) who did something nice... this memory has been passed down and has encouraged others to do nice as well.

I plan on telling my kids that when they get older, it's better than saying "yeah, we made him up, sorry."

Yeah...the principle of the whole thing is good. I just posted this because I thought it was funny. Didn't mean any disrespect.

I forgot all about Santa these last few years. However, I recently began visiting with my Dad's side of the family, where I've got 10 younger siblings ranging from 4 to 12, and they're enamoured with the idea of Santa. It made me look forward to christmas again. Just my 2 cents. It's a big deal to little kids, even if it's a stupid and illogical concept.

That post was pretty funny JW. No disrespect taken at all.

Very true... It's funny, it must be the biggest world-wide conspiracy easily.

no, that would be the idea of Govt

I thought of that... however, I think the myth of Santa is perpetrated by more people on the planet than the various myths of government.

quote:

Originally posted by titaniumdoughnut:
Very true... It's funny, it must be the biggest world-wide conspiracy easily.

Or man going to the moon in 1969.

ok then, how bout religion

*Pats Kyle on the back and nods*

Good one! I'd like to add the shape of the world, but I feel that some of you may be skeptical of this and insist on believing that the world is round.

you mean you inferior beings didn't know the earth ws flat?

i thought it was all in my head

That information only works if you don't believe:
That Santa can pause/slow time,
or that his sack of toys is magical and does not weight much at all, despite containing so many presents.
Santa is just as real as God.