IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?

IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?

As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from the 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 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. The same holds true for elves.

2) Assuming that elves really do exist, they would never be allowed to work for Santa under the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights which declared slave labor illegal and gave the right to freely travel into or out of any country. Unless elves aren’t classified as human.

3) The North Pole is a frozen ocean. Santa’s arctic hideout, unless completely submersible, would at certain times of year fall through the ice - even if it was a medium sized rambler. At virtually no time since the last ice age could the ice hold up a castle the size Santa’s is rumored to be, not to mention the massive warehouse it would take to make and store the toys.

4) 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 work load 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, presuming there’s at least one good child in each.

5) 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. This works out to be 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/100th 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 in 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 purpose of our calculations we will accept), we are know talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must to 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 the purpose of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run tops, 20 miles per hour.

6) 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 convention reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that “flying reindeer” (see point #1) can 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 human)

7) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as space craft 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 in flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The 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 the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

8) 214,200 reindeer flying over head presents a substantial safety problem at least from a sanitary point of view. An average reindeer deposits several pound of “Doo Doo” per day. While most of the debris would burn up or escape earth’s orbit due to the speed it is traveling, some would inevitably hit the earth and cause sever damage to whatever it hit.

9) Even though Santa travels faster than conventional reindeer, he would still show up on the radar screens of all our major defensive systems. The NorAD, by all current laws of warfare has every right to try and shoot him down.

In conclusion, if Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s now dead.

[vulcanvixen]

I LOVE IT!!!

However...................

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