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Use Google Earth To Track Santa

Kickboy12 writes "Google Earth can be used to track Santa Claus, beginning at 2pm GMT December 24th. From the article: 'While we didn't work a deal for Naughty or Nice data layers, we did negotiate the rights to track this user on his big trip. If you've already got Google Earth, you can too.' So, if you have Google Earth, track Santa!"

8 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. Aaargh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's Santa Claus ffs! There is no "e" on the end of it!

    1. Re:Aaargh by kae_verens · · Score: 5, Funny

      While we're on the subject of pedanticism, I'd like to point out that there is no Santa, superfluous 'e' or not.

      Oh - and there should have been a comma before 'ffs' in the parent's post.

  2. NORAD tracks santa too.. by User+956 · · Score: 5, Informative

    the Norad Santa site is http://www.noradsanta.org/

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
  3. The Church put the Santa in Santa Claus by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    Santa himself is an atheist invention

    Santa is only called Santa because the Christian Church has recognized Nicholas of Myra, the first Santa Claus, as a saint. (The current Santa is allegedly Tim Allen.)

  4. Re:Mwahaha. by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Funny

    It was already easy to track him with all those RFID tags on the stuff in his bag.

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  5. Santa Strikes Back! by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Funny

    Santa's legal team is said to be working on getting an anti-stalking injunction against Google Inc. "They may not be evil, but they sure are naughty! No toys for them!" said chief lawyer Binky.

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  6. Re:I'm Spartacus too by miyako · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just to point out, for those who don't seem to know, using Xmas as opposed to Christmas was never an attempt to desecularize the holiday- and has (likely) been in use for a very long time. It originates with the greek letter Chi (Which looks like an english X) and is the first letter of the word christ in greek. Later Constantine added Rho to create the Labarum (chi-rho) symbol which looks like an X and P superimposed.
    In other words, X has always been a traditional symbol for Christ, and a such is NOT a means to desecularlize the holiday or "Remove Christ From Christmas".
    \not christian
    \\wishes christians would stfu about the xmas vs christmas debate
    \\\Won't point out that christmas was originally a pagan holiday, because everyone knows that by now.
    \\\\hope that clears things up.

    --
    Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
  7. credit to who ever did this first by rev_g33k_101 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Santa Claus: An Engineer's Perspective

    I. There are approximately 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Buddist religions, this reduces the workload on 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.

    II. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and rotation of the earth, assuming he travels 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 at least one good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, jump out, go 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 in the sleigh, and move on to the next house. (That's why it's really pointless to stay up and wait for him....)

    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 breaks. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For the purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 75.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

    III. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child has 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 nothing more than 300 pounds. Even granted that "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or nine of them; Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the sleigh itself, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizibeth (the ship, not the monarch).

    IV. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance; this would heat up the reindeer in the same fasion 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 causing deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.2 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reaches the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 G's. A 250 pound Santa (which seem ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pound of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

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

    --
    "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."