There are approximately two billion children ( persons under 18 ) in the
world.
However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or
Buddhist religions (except maybe in Japan) , this reduces the workload for
Christmas night to about 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the
Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children
per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at
least one good child in each.
Santa has about 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 967.7 visits per second.
This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa
has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the
chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the
tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney,
jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.
Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around
the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the
purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per
household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops
or breaks.
This means 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, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second,
and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that
each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the
sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On
land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even
granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount,
the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them--Santa would need
360,000 of them.
This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another
54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the
ship, not the monarch). 600,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second
creates enormous air resistance--this would heat up the reindeer in the
same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead
pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second
each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously,
exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in
their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporised within 4.26
thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth
house on his trip.
Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from
a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in 0.001 seconds, would be subjected to
acceleration forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems
ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015
pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him
to a quivering blob of pink goo and a few white hairs....
Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
Name:
VIPPER2004-12-25 0:47
MY COCK IS TOO BIG
Name:
VIPPER2004-12-25 3:37
You're omiting an interesting subject.... the flyers reindeer!!!
There's not known deer species that can fly. Nevertheless there are 300.000 species of living organisim left to clasify and even though most of them are insects an bacteria, it is not posible at all to deny the existance of the flying deer that only Santa knows...
I translated it from the spanish version (bear with it my English sux):
Ninguna especie conocida de reno puede volar. No obstante, existen 300.000 especies de organismos vivos pendientes de clasificación y, si bien la mayoría de ellas son insectos y gérmenes, no es posible descartar completamente la posible existencia entre ellas del reno volador que sólo Santa Claus conoce. Pero no quiero daros falsas esperanzas, yo personalmente creo que es algo difícil. :-)
Name:
VIPPER2004-12-25 9:40
--Santa can do the job and Christmas is saved!
Calculations maintain that the laws of physics should prevent Santa Claus from delivering all his gifts and that Santa would burn up in the atmosphere if he tried. The internet magazine, forskning.no, has put together a team of four top researchers to look into the case. The panel’s conclusion is clear: Santa can do the job and Christmas is saved!
Every Christmas, calculations circulate that have been dubbed “The Physics of Santa Claus”. The calculations cast doubt as to whether Santa Claus could possibly deliver gifts to all the world’s good children – and still remain within the laws of physics. To deliver gifts to all who deserve them, they assert, Santa would need to move so fast that he would vaporise due to air resistance, be torn to pieces by gravitational forces or suffer other terrible fates we wouldn’t wish for Santa Claus.
Many fall for these calculations. Yes, there has even been one instance in which a vicar was criticised for using them to explain to small children that Santa does not exist. Luckily, some would say, the vicar has apologised to the traumatised children.
Because, even though the physics of the calculations is apparently good, the reasoning rests on a completely wrong premise, namely that Santa Clause does not exist. Even small children understand that this premise is completely wrong!
--Ion-shield
If Santa Claus is to deliver all the gifts to all the good children, his sleigh must fly so fast that he would burn up due to air resistance. But it has already been documented that Santa has no problem climbing down a chimney with a fire burning below. So how does Santa solve the problem of heat?
"Santa obviously has an ion-shield of charged particles, held together by a magnetic field, surrounding his entire sleigh. This is how he solves the heat problem," points out Knut Jørgen Røed Oedegaard, who also casts a new light in the night sky:
"There are many meteor showers in December. Many astrophysicists, including apparently serious ‘celebrity’ astrophysicists at the university, who maintain that these lights in the sky are the result of dust particles that burn up as they enter our atmosphere. But this is nonsense, because they ignore the truth: That the lights are the result of Santa Claus moving out of and into the atmosphere as he travels around the globe delivering Christmas presents!”
Oedegaard believes that Santa saves time, energy and air resistance by producing gifts out in space. A new snowboard or doll weights quite little when it is high above the earth.
"Likewise, Santa Claus doesn’t travel in our four dimensions (remember that time is the fourth dimension), but makes use of some 11 dimensions. These dimensions make it quite easy to pick up gifts from his warehouse at the North Pole," emphasises Oedegaard, while Nils Lid Hjort and Gaute Einevoll feel that recent string-theory allows for the use of at least 26 dimensions.
--Flying Reindeer
Another apparent impossibility with Santa Claus are his reindeer, who don’t just plod along. Nils Lid Hjort doesn’t find it so strange that there are flying reindeer.
Gaute Einevoll, who works with physics in organic systems, points out that it is a bit odd that reindeer don’t have wings. But Ødegaard has elegantly solved the problem:
"Santa Claus of course uses vacuum energy. The sleigh and reindeer use repulsive energy to compensate for the force of gravity and therefore can fly."
And with that, the conversation turns to a discussion whether Santa has chosen the North Pole because of its social, religious and political neutrality; multiple universes with a Santa in each; and so on.
--Papa With a Fake Beard?
There are quite a few flippant and speculative assertions about Santa Claus. The most ridiculous of these is that Santa Claus is just papa who has dressed up in the garage:
"I want to comment on the alternative situations: Of course you can find many trivial and sometimes fake Santas out there. But that doesn’t mean that you won’t find some real Santas," says Einevoll, who adds:
"If I lived alone at the North Pole and were to visit children and their mothers, I would want to do it when their father was out, he says, and suggests that this is the source for the socially realistic popular song 'I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus'."
All together the panel the panel agrees without doubt that Santa Claus not only makes use of advanced physics, but he is also a brilliant organiser.
"Santa lives at the North Pole and there isn’t so much happening aside from the occasional polar explorer. So he can use the whole year for self improvement,” points out Gaute Einevoll.
Therefore, all children of all ages can relax: The laws of physics assure us that Christmas will come this year as usual!
Name:
VIPPER2004-12-25 9:43
Also:
"Let's just say his existence can't be definitely ruled out.
I'm not saying there aren't improbable aspects to the story. You have x number of kids (even leaving out the Muslims, Shintoists, Hindus, animists, etc., who one presumes get shafted, giftwise), you have y time per visit, you have z average distance between domiciles, you have an earth of known diameter, and you have 24 hours in the day. It doesn't add up. You have the problem of access to the gift-giving venue in the absence of chimneys with fireplaces, unless we're assuming that Santa Claus oozes through the keyholes in the manner of the critter in The Abyss, which is not a pretty picture. You have the problem of what in all likelihood is the earth's single largest concentration of toy manufacturing facilities in a polar region remote from resources of every type (cold excepted), that's so carefully camouflaged as to be invisible to satellite surveillance, and that produces no detectable emissions. Although now that one thinks about it, there's that ozone hole over the south pole. Hmm.
On the other hand, consider the following:
A great many seemingly improbable events do in fact occur. Florida winning the World Series. Cleveland winning the World Series. [Inevitable 2004 update: Boston.] Compared to this, what is the accurate delivery of zillions of packages in the course of a single night?
Besides, Fed Ex does it. So what if we're talking Memphis and drivers in baseball caps rather than the north pole and elves? It's the principle of the thing.
OK, so there's a certain amount of mortal participation involved. Perhaps, as a parent, you've personally done your bit to help Santa and thought you did so of your own accord. The ants in the anthill probably think they're doing it on a whim, too. But looking at the matter objectively, we can't deny that a larger purpose is at work and that we are in the service of an agency greater than ourselves.
You mean the IRS.
I mean the impulse to be generous. Three hundred sixty-four days out of the year humankind commits all manner of heinous acts. On the 365th day we give toys to the kids. I'm not saying that the latter compensates for the former. I'm not saying Adolph Hitler wouldn't have given presents to his children, if he'd had children. But come on, it's got to count for something. The giving of gifts in such a way that no credit will devolve upon ourselves is sufficiently at odds with our routine behavior as to be accounted a mystery, and we may as well give that mystery a name. Santa Claus it is.
Besides, to believe in Santa Claus is to believe in magic. The belief in magic in many respects is a pernicious thing. Because of it you've got countless multitudes thinking that aliens abduct people, that Elvis is alive, that you can earn big money stuffing envelopes in your home, and that the TV preacher can cure you if you send him 50 bucks. A certain class of persons, of whom your columnist is one, will go through their lives attempting to extinguish these foolish hopes. No doubt in the main it is good that we do so. But even the sternest among us remembers the wonder we felt as children to think there was a force having a kindly interest in us that wasn't bound by the rules of this drab world. Wherefore if there's someone who's going to say flat out that Santa Claus doesn't exist, it's not going to be me."
Name:
VIPPER2004-12-25 18:04
one minor thing to point out is that there is in fact only one santa clause however that does not mean that there is not in fact another saint nicholas or any of the other way you say the name, therefore mayhaps on a purely historical level the christmas department of magical present distribution and the serveral departments of distributors were once known but do to name similarity as can easily happen in large corporations and the degradation of accurate data over time... well it's self-explanatory really. don't forget to factor in the fact that as a supernatural being that only truly exists one day out of every 365.25 the existence of said character through time would naturally be different than our singularly small viewpoint of it. if I were to put in my personal opinion than I would have to say that mayhaps as the times changed and population increased santa himself modernized and if not delegated responsibilities ala strip mall santa and donation bucket santa, then mayhaps he advanced technologically. in all honesty the man did know how to make reindeer fly whereas we pathetic humans can't. therefore where the limits of human science or at least economy limit us to whatever measly accomplishments science can attest to it is quite possible that santa just infringed some copyright laws and beams the toys into their houses, so throughout the year he and his elves program the teleporter and coordinate gift exchange and the true moment of xmas is when santa is leaning back with his sys admin waiting for the clock to strike.
Bullshit (often bowdlerized to BS), also Bullcrap, is a common English expletive. It can also be shortened to just "Bull".
Most commonly, it describes incorrect, misleading, false language and statements. Literally, it describes the feces of a bull. As with many expletives, it can be used as an interjection (or in many other parts of speech) and can carry a wide variety of meanings.
Bullshitting is usually when one makes statements that are false, or made-up. Usually people describe other people's action of making a lot of statements as bullshitting in arguments, when one is making up rules or making examples that are not anything to do with what they are discussing or when one is making statements by using examples that need different rules to be applied, so this person is bullshitting
As it contains the word "shit", the term is sometimes considered foul language, hence the use of the euphemistic abbreviations "bull" and "BS". Nonetheless, the term is prevalent in American English and, as with many words, the term is used in a variety of countries, some dating back to approximately the same era World War I. In British English, bollocks is a comparable expletive, although bullshit is now a commonly used expletive in British English also.