Scientific Reasons Why Santa Wont be Coming This Year
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 16) in the world, BUT since
Santa doesn't appear to handle Muslin, Hindu, Jewish,and Buddhist children,
that reduces the work load to 15% of the total - 378 million, according to
the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children
per household, that's 91.9 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 rotation of the earth. Assuming he travels east to west
(which seems logical). This works out at 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 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 onto the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8
million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which of course we
all know to be false, but for the purpose of our calculations we will
accept) we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household, a total trip of
75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at
least once every 31 hours, plus feeding etc. This means that Santa's sleigh
is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For
purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses
space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles a second. A conventional reindeer
can run at 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 Leggo (1 kilogram) the sleigh
is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as
overweight. On land conventional reinder can pull no more than 300 pounds.
Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull ten times the
normal ammount, 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 353,450 tons. Again for comparison - this is four times the weight
of the ocean cruiser Queen Elizabeth.
5. 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance - this will heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as space craft
re-entering the earths atmosphere. The lead pair of deer will each generate
14.3 Quintillion joules of energy per second. 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
vapourised within 4.26 thousands of a second. Santa, meantime will be subject
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.
Conclusion...
IF Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now!
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