You may have seen this, where scientific evidence is presented that Santa Claus is a myth... but, did you ever see the rebuttal that prooves he is real? This is for all of you with kids/grandkids that think they are soooo smart.
IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?
As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renown scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into 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 cihldren, 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.
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 seemes 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...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 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 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the Ship, not the Monarch).
5) 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enourmous 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 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.
YES THERE IS A SANTA - A REBUTTAL
The skeptical article dated December 17th appears to be conclusive but in fact is woefully lacking in better understanding of matter.
1- Santa does not have special reindeer, but rather enables ordinary reindeer to fly by special deer feed. (Don't ask Santa for the formula; I did once and he left me off the list for years- see #2)
2- With regard to the issue of how many homes Santa must visit: Not every one of the homes has even a single child that can qualify as good. Santa has very high standards, especially with regard to greedy letters most kids send. Better luck next year
3- With regard to speed, if you ask any good physicist, she will tell you that time slows down as you move close to the speed of light. Since S anta's sleigh is powered by the Christmas Star, it travels AT the speed of light. He actually arrives at the next location BEFORE he left the last one (traveling East, remember?). With regard to the time it takes to set up the presents and fill the stockings, Santa is non-union, so it doesn't take him as long as you would expect. Sidenote: all that high-speed travel reverses the aging process. That is why Santa comes just once a year. If he did it twice a year he would have been a baby again around 1900.
4- Santa's Bag of toys is actually a portal through the time/space continuum, like a wormhole. It connects directly to the North Pole warehouse.
5- With regard to the friction, Santa's entire sleigh is designed to onvert the heat of the friction to run Santa's bag of toys (see #4). The sonic booms are canceled out by the frequency of the special sleigh bells.
In conclusion, Santa does exist. All that running around does require a lot of energy, though; so please remember to leave him some milk and cookies (especially chocolate chip). And if you see him, tell him I don't want the reindeer formula anymore... and the folks over at SPY Magazine do.
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Topic: Santa Claus: The Myth Exposed... or is it? (Read 1281 times)