Hey Guest!
Hey - did you know if you click on the title of a thread it will take you to the first unread post since you last visited that thread?
but were afraid to ask: 
STOP!! Never post your email address in open forums. Bots can "harvest" your email! If you must share your email use a Private Message or use the 
smilie in place of the real @
Pretty Please - add it to our Events forum(s) and add to the calendar! >> 
duffy
Senior Member
Offline
With Christmas approaching I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.
<span style="color: #FF0000">WARNING DO NOT LET CHILDREN READ THIS FOR THE ATTENTION OF GROWNUPS ONLY.</span>
*1> No known species of reindeer can fly BUT there are over 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, Jewish and Buddhist children, that then 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 91.3 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, as 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 1/1,000,000 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 what ever 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 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding etc.
*5> 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 poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 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, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeers" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with 8, or even 9. 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 4 times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
*7> 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft 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 vaporised within 4.26 thousands 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.
<span style="color: #FF0000">WARNING DO NOT LET CHILDREN READ THIS FOR THE ATTENTION OF GROWNUPS ONLY.</span>
*1> No known species of reindeer can fly BUT there are over 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, Jewish and Buddhist children, that then 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 91.3 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, as 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 1/1,000,000 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 what ever 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 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding etc.
*5> 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 poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 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, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeers" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with 8, or even 9. 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 4 times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
*7> 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft 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 vaporised within 4.26 thousands 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.
