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 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 in the world (persons under 18). But
since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist
children, that reduces the workload by 85% of the total -leaving 378
million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average
(census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes.
One presumes there is at least one good child per house.
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 1/1000 th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down
the chimney, fill the stocking, 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 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 do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc.
That 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, move at a poky 27.4
miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, at tops 15 miles per
hour.
4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming
each child gets nothing more then 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 the 'flying reindeer' can
pull TEN TIMES that normal amount, we cannot the job with eight, or even
nine, We need 214,200 reindeer. This increased 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 travelling at 650 miles per second creates enourmous air
resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as
spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair will
absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per second. Each. In short,
they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the
reindeer behind them, and creating a deafening sonic boom in their wake.
The entire reindeer team will be vaporized with 4.26 thousandths of a
second. Santa meanwhile, will be subject 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 a 4,315,015 pound force.
In conclusion, If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas eve, hi's
now dead.