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.
There
are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world.
BUT since Santa doesn’t (appear) to handle 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 is 91.9 million homes.
One presumes there’s at least one good child in each.
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 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
75½ 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, 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of
comparison, the fastest manmade 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.
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 their 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.
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 re-entering the earth’s
atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer with 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 can pull that off, even the Borg are no match for
him.
This analysis can be traced back
as far as 1990, and has been attributed to a lot of different
people. It's found all over the 'web, with many different
"original" authors claiming it as their own. It
awaits the writing of a better conclusion, however, since we all
know that Santa Claus is not only very much alive, but does, in
fact, accomplish everything set out above. --Mike--
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