> IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?
> =======================
>
> As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help
> from that renown scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - 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 (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 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 stockings, 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 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to
> do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding
> and etc.
>
> This means that 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 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.
>
> 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 321,300 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 reindeer" (see
> 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.
>
> 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 reentering 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 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.


--- GIGO+ sn 37 at nisc vsn 0.98w32
