Interesting Scientific Analysis

[Frogster (The Alchemist)]

I found this a few years back on the net....

Is Santa Real ?

Let’s apply a little scientific evaluation, to see if we can come up with an answer…

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 (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau). Assuming an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that computes to 108 million homes - presuming 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 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 stocking, 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 onto 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. This amounts to 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 pokey 27.4miles 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 ounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousands tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 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 vaporized 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 .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 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 rushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a dribbling mess of twitching innards.

Therefore, if Santa ever did exist, he's dead now.

Merry Christmas anyway.

[Brian]

You Sir, Are completely heartless!!!!

[millerkev]

dont ya know santa has helpers

[blakey]

. And I was gonna ask for some e-liquids from the alchemist from santa for christmas too
ah well.....

.

[Brian]

Do Jason`s Elves help Santa on Christmas Eve?

[Ron]

You will deny the tooth fairy and the easter bunny next and dont start me on the birds and bees

[Bluefish]

Nov 13, 2012 23:33:31 GMT Ron said:

You will deny the tooth fairy and the easter bunny next and dont start me on the birds and bees

Doh, everybody knows bird's and bee's exist

[alvoram]

Silly Froggy, dont you know santa has magic elves as helpers, who give him magic dust to slow down time, and get himself down the chimneys, no need for all that rushing, he has all the time in the world. And as for his payload, his magic sack takes care of that, it's bigger on the inside don't ya know, like the T.a.r.d.i.s

[lobeydosser]

<<< Therefore, if Santa ever did exist, he's dead now.>>>

Really?

Well who's this then?

[OneDay]

I hope those aren't my pressies falling out of his sack

[lobeydosser]

Nov 14, 2012 0:55:02 GMT OneDay said:

I hope those aren't my pressies falling out of his sack

Dinna worry, its only some Provaris and Penelopes.
Nuthin' important!

[Sandra (aka Chillax)]

how could you just.....how could you

[Roger]

He does exist and he has to have a CAA flight check as well!!

[Frogster (The Alchemist)]

Don’t shoot the messenger….. I didn’t write it, I just found it!!!