Is there a Santa Claus? |
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Whilst none of the known species of reindeer can fly, there are however 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified. Whilst most of these are insects and germs, we should not rule out the possibility of flying reindeer. There are about 2 billion children in the world but Santa doesn't handle Muslims, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children. That reduces the workload to 15% of the total, say 300 million. Based on an average rate of 3 children per household, that's 100 million homes and one assumes there should be at least one good child in each. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth and assuming he travels east to west. This works out to about 900 visits per second. That 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 out for him, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 100 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth, we are talking about 0.8 miles per household, a total trip of at least 80 million miles. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second or 3,000 times the speed of sound. In comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle is the Voyager space probe moving at a poky 30 miles per second and a conventional reindeer can run up to 20 miles per hour. The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 lbs), the sleigh is carrying 320,000 tons, not counting Santa and the reindeer. On land, conventional reindeer can pull about 300 pounds. Even allowing that flying reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We would need 215,000 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 355,000 tons. Again, for comparison, this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth. Now, 355,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. The reindeer will heat up in the same manner as spacecraft when they re-enter the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will each absorb 14.3 Quintillion joules/second. In short, they will burst into flame instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them. The entire reindeer team should vaporise within the first second. Meanwhile, Santa will be subjected to centrifugal forces 20,000 times greater than gravity which means a 300 pound Santa would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 2,000 tons of force. In conclusion - if Santa did try to deliver presents on Christmas Eve, you would probably agree he would have difficulty surviving the effort. |
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