Yes, Virginia, we know you really really want to believe in
Santa Claus. But what do you think science has to say on the subject. Well – it
depends on who you ask. The following is an argument against the science of
Santa that was originally published in Spy magazine in January 1990. And it has
been countered by others who want to dispute those scientific conclusions.
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" title="91.8 million" SAHLinkId="387" target="_blank">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 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" title="91.8 million" SAHLinkId="387" target="_blank">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 anoint, 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.
5. 353,000 tons traveling 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 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.
Rebuttal 4
Jerome Elisha
Surely the 'esteemed' professional making the analysis means
'forces of acceleration', and not "centrifugal forces" as stated.
Furthermore, to accept the ability of reindeer to defy the law of gravity and
then bind them to the remaining laws of physics is an error in argument.
The assertion ignores empirical data - Santa does exist: one
can see him often during the months leading up to the Big Day. Indeed, it is a
frequent occurrence to see him on multiple street corners, or in front of
several businesses, at the same time. Either A) Santa has many helpers, or B)
Santa is capable of numerous manifestations. In either case, the acceleration
arguments above are not valid, since the multiplicity of Santas (manifestations
or helpers) could easily handle smaller portions of the task with time left
over for cookies and milk.
Arguments A) and B) are both are supported by the different
guises he sports in various countries (Santa Claus, Sinter Klaus, Kris Kringle,
et al.), and by his acknowledged ability to "see you when you're sleeping;
he knows when you're awake". The decision between A) or B) is left as a
proof for the student.
Rebuttal 5
Lorenzo Sadun
I wrote this rebuttal to the "physics of Santa"
analysis back in 1993:
If you're going to criticise Santa Claus on physical
grounds, you may at least do it right.
The payload calculations are nonsense. Adding, say, 1000
stops back at the North Pole for reloading adds only a few percent to the
entire distance covered, while reducing the payload by a factor of 1000. This
is clearly the way to go.
The nonuniform distribution of children has a tremendous
effect on the routing. With sensible routing, the average distance from a good
child to the next good child is only a couple hundred feet in suburban
conditions (this is clearly higher in the country, but is much less in, say, New
York City). With only .05 miles between average good
children, Santa need only travel at Mach 200, just a little faster than
Ulysses. This reduces the force of air resistance by a factor of 200, and the
power absorbed by the reindeer by 3000.
(Of course, if Santa stops to give coal to bad children it
could slow things down a bit. But it appears that increasing population has
made Santa give up that trick. When was the last time you heard of anybody
getting a lump of coal?)
We all saw the pictures of a smart bomb falling through an
Iraqi smokestack during the Gulf War. Clearly Santa uses the same technology
for toys and chimneys. By dropping, say, 100 toys at a time from high altitude,
Santa can reduce his speed by another factor of 10. While still supersonic,
this is now slightly less than orbital velocity, sparing Santa and his team the
trauma of extreme centrifugal force.
Santa's trip IS a remarkable feat of aeronautics, but please
don't say it's impossible.
Rebuttal 6
E. B. Davis
As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with
research help from that renowned scientific journal SPY magazine (January,
1990) -- I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa
Claus.
The analysis you sent me about the death of Santa Claus,
based on classical physics, is seriously flawed owing to its neglect of quantum
phenomena that become significant in his particular case. As it happens, the
terminal velocity of a reindeer in dry December air over the Northern
Hemisphere (for example) is known with tremendous precision. The mass of Santa
and his sleigh (since the number of children and their gifts is also known
precisely, ahead of time, and the reindeer must weigh in minutes before the flight)
is also known with tremendous precision. His direction of flight is, as you
say, essentially east to west.
All of that, when taken together, means that the momentum
vector of Mr. Claus and his cargo is known with incredible precision. An
elementary application of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle yields the result
that Santa's location, at any given moment on Christmas Eve, is highly
imprecise. In other words, he is "smeared out" over the surface of
the earth, analogous to the manner in which an electron is "smeared
out" within a certain distance from the nucleus in an atom. Thus he can,
quite literally, be everywhere at any given moment.
In addition, the relativistic velocities which his reindeer
can attain for brief moments make it possible for him, in certain cases, to
arrive at some locations shortly before he left the North Pole. Santa, in other
words, assumes for brief periods the characteristics of tachyons. I will admit
that tachyons remain hypothetical, but then so do black holes, and who really doubts
their existence anymore?