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Does Santa Claus exist?

To: mgs@Autox.Team.Net
Subject: Does Santa Claus exist?
From: Paul Hunt <paul.hunt1@virgin.net>
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 19:12:16 +0000
Engineering Proof of the non-existance of Santa
(yes, we ruin everything)

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).

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 illogical). 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 traveling 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 17,500 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.

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

Merry Christmas.



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