The Existance of Santa Claus

[ccb056]

Answer: The scientific hypothesis that Santa Claus exists
raises a few concerns:

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are
30,000 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
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
the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census)
rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 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 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. This means that
Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, about
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. A conventional reindeer can
run 15 miles per hour. Tops.

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
321,000 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" (point #1) could 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 cruise ship, that is).

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 a spacecraft might in 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 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.

[Aggressor Prime]

Well, haven't you looked around.
All of the stores have Santas.
Santa has lots of replacements.