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The Science of Santa
Hugh Pickens writes writes "For decades, mystified scientists have chalked up Santa's power to the inexplicable wonder of magic, but North Carolina State University aerospace engineer Larry Silverberg, team leader on a first-of-its-kind visiting scholars program at Santa's Workshop-North Pole Labs (NPL), says that Santa is, in fact, a scientific genius and that Silverberg looks forward to Christmas each year, so he can ponder the remarkable accomplishments of one of the greatest pioneers in his field. 'Santa is not just a jolly old elf,' says Silverberg. 'He really has an understanding of engineering, technology, science that's far beyond our own.' It all starts at the North Pole where Santa has an elaborate technical setup that rivals the nerve center of the CIA including an underground antenna that listens to children's thoughts. 'He takes those signals and finds out whether the child has been naughty or nice, and ultimately, what present the child wants.' Santa's mastery of nanotechnology allows Santa to grow presents on the spot eschewing the necessity of carrying them on the sleigh which would be prohibitive because of the weight. Then there's Santa's sleigh itself, an advanced aerodynamic structure equipped with laser sensors to find the optimal path, and covered by a nanostructured 'skin' that is porous and contains its own low-pressure system, which holds the air flowing around the airborne sled onto the body, reducing drag by as much as 90 percent. Finally there's Santa's greatest invention, the relativity cloud, that bends time and space to allow for his round-the-world Christmas journey and explains why Santa is so seldom seen. 'Relativity clouds are controllable domains – rips in time – that allow him months to deliver presents while only a few minutes pass on Earth. The presents are truly delivered in a wink of an eye.'"
Santa Claus derives from St. Nicholas, who was someone lived around early byzantine era in western anatolia. (modern turkey). He used to give presents to the kids.
In line with the person it was derived from, santa claus is not an elf himself - he is a magic person (human). Elf 'helpers' were added in recent centuries through influence of celtic/anglosakson folklore.
Read radical news here
...it must be. Yet, a question occurs to me: who finances Santa's technological wet dreams ?
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Scientific Inquiry into 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 .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2
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
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
spacecraft re-entering 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.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Kinda late. The Finns already made a documentary on that topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Exports
For a moment I was worried this would be the old chestnut about Santa bursting into flames a second after he takes off, because of air resistance and the speeds necessary to deliver toys to every child on the planet. This, at least, I can fill a stocking to.
... an O(1) solution to the Traveling Salesman Problem, but he ain't sharing it. Which is a bummer, since that's all I wanted for Christmas.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
enough said.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Santa's mastery of nanotechnology allows Santa to grow presents on the spot
Thereby depriving all the elves of jobs! They did the right things, they followed the rules, they went to elf school, and got advanced degrees in craftsmanship, but they're getting screwed by Santa, who's just rewarding the children he thinks are "nice". You remember when you were a kid? Did the children who were actually nice get the best presents? No! It was always the kids of some corporate fat cat! We see who Santa's rewarding. Occupy the North Pole!
"Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second"
This explains why we've never been able to nail him with anti-aircraft fire...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
It would appear that the only magic here is the disappearing funding for his department because they spend their government- and taxpayer-funded time doing stupid stuff like this.
Really? Because we're not in armed conflicts all over the globe and our space travel initiatives aren't completely fucked? Come on guys, serious problems - serious response. Let's dig ourselves out of this intellectual hole we've fallen in and get back to being pioneers of... well, anything but 100% outsourced capitalism.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
If he's growing presents on the spot would it not make more sense to simply leave a nano seed at every house he visits so he can simply grow new presents next year without the need for a repeat visit? This would allow him to only visit houses where the seed was damaged or where a new seed needs to be placed.
Where's the post about the science of the menorah's oil lasting for eight days?
Even if he is, good luck to him. He never outsources jobs with the exception of the work he leaves in the hands of mums and dads! :)
... is why the WTO hasn't gone after Santa for violating import/export & tariff laws, and why the AFL-CIO & the Teamsters haven't shut him down or made him disappear.
BTW, the house I grew-up in didn't have a fireplace, therefore we also didn't have a chimney. When I was a kid, I believed Santa came down our sewer system vent pipes.
Dr. Silverberg has a very long tradition of "researching Santa science". It has become one of those fun things his students look forward to having a few laughs with him about. He has even made videos on the topic ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ3VWRzk_r4&sns=emb).
Before you all get the wrong idea, he is actually a very intelligent and respected engineer and teaches dynamic systems controls. He just likes to make things fun every once in a while.
TFA was written by a non-parent.
The answer is much simpler. Since he only give presents to children who have been good all year long, Santa only makes a few brief stops in the coma wards of hospitals. The rest is just marketing.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
In education and scientific pursuits
that NORAD tracked Santa's sleigh last night too.
Occam's Razor can be used with sufficient enough certainty to show that there is no Santa and that the gifts are bought by the parents (or somebody else), and the fact that it says "made in China" only confirms this theory.
You can't handle the truth.
Virginia is going to bitch slap you unconscious.
If Santa was moving so fast, how come NORAD can track him, and post videos of him at major cities...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Santa Claus operates entirely within the realm of natural means known for thousands of years.
CM: Yeah! And then, when they flied across da sky, they used ta come down to places like, oh, Chicago, L.A., Nueva York and Pacoima and all those places, y'know, and then land on top of people's roofs and then 'ol Santa Claus would make himself real small, y'know, like, a real small guy, and he'd come down da chimney and then he would give you all da stuff that he made, man. And...dig this, man...he did it all in one night, man!
TC: Hey, just a minute, man. Now, how'd he do that, man?
CM: Oh, well, man, he took da freeway. How else, man?
TC: No, man. No, man, how'd he do all that other stuff, man? Like, how'd he make himself small, man. And, how'd he, like, how'd he get the reindeer off the ground, man?
CM: Oh, well, man, he had some magic dust, man.
TC: Some magic dust?
CM: Yeah, magic dust, y'know? He used ta give a little bit to da reindeer, a little bit to Santa Claus, a little bit more for Santa Claus, a little bit more...
TC: And this would get the reindeer off, man?
CM: Aw, got 'em off, man? Are you kidding, man? They flew all da way around da world, man!
TC: Hey, that's far out, man!
-- Santa Calus and His Old Lady , Cheech and Chong, 1971
Santa doesn't live at north pole, but at Korvatunturi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korvatunturi
Sounds like they're gearing up for a gritty reboot.
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
Santa employs legions of Chinese children at a wuan a day each to make all those presents. That's how he comes up with them, then reverse-crowd sources the distribution by using the world's retail delivery network and the kids' parents to take the presents the "last mile" to the individual subsylvan space to await opening by excited, then inevitably disappointed kids, many of whom will have more fun with the packaging than the toys.
In other words, Santa is Walmart. Let's stop the charade, people.
(Anyway, it's high time kids grow up, and graduate from believing in a made-up magic man named Santa to believing in a made-up magic man named "god".)
What is next, justifying religion?
Santa is nothing but a training in bullshitting kids. When they are told there is no santa, they fill up that gap with zombie jesus.
Don't like to your kids. Tell them you love them very much and give them a gift, that's all they need. Fairy tales rot their little minds.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Santa uses string theory. You see there are an infinite number of universes, like on Superman. All Santa has to do is visit n houses, then slip over into the "next" dimension and visit another n houses. Santa visits m dimensions before dawn.
I have an elegant proof that for n and m greater than 2 everyone gets a present, but it is too big to fit into the margin here.
Already covered by "Nature".
Somebody should really quit drinking.
Yawn...zzzzzzzzzz.
Don't worry, TFS is smokin' crack. Nanoassembly doesn't save weight - what does he thing, nanotech converts air into presents?
It might save space in the bag, if it's just filled with gray goo, but I don't think Santa has Trek replicators yet.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
There are several ways. One is a theme park near Evansville, Indiana, in the midwestern United States. Oh yeah, and the big endorsement deals with Coke (wonder why Santa wears red instead of green now?) and Disney (The Santa Clause).
We can scientifically prove that most of them are in fact Naughty. How many parents fake Santa's appearance to mask their children's Naughtiness?
And this is why Santa doesn't visit Toy Town. For one thing, the viewpoint toy is in fact Noddy, and for another, Big-Ears does a good job of faking (a previous) Santa's appearance.
roman_mir likely views the christmas carol as a tragedy and looks up to scrooge's early ideals.
To followers of at least one rapidly-growing branch of Christianity, A Christmas Carol is in fact a tragedy. Four fallen angels, who self-identify as "Jacob Marley", "Christmas Past", "Christmas Present", and "Christmas Yet to Come", visit notoriously stingy, mean-spirited Ebenezer Scrooge, a loan officer at S&M Bank, and convince him to become more generous. But I've talked to one of Jehovah's Witnesses who sees it as from bad to bad because the end of generosity doesn't justify the means of celebrating a modernized form of Saturnalia.
I just seen the movie Arthur Christmas with my daughter last night. They actually made a very good attempt at explaining how Santa could work and still making it an entertaining kids movie. I would actually recommend anyone interested in the "Science of Santa" to watch it for a laugh.
But, for those who won't see it, here are some of the highlights. As population has increased, so has the technology involved and the elven work force. Santa himself pretty much only visits one house per town and a crack team of elite ninja elves do all of the rest of the deliveries in the town. Santa is a generational title that has been passed down from father to son with each Santa performing up to 70 missions (Christmases).
The old sleigh was pulled by 8 reindeer who used a continuous dose of magic elf dust mined from the Aurora Borealis to allow them to fly and had an approximate top speed of 50,000 MpH and had a variety of camouflage devices.
The new S-1 is a state of the art flying airship capable of anti-gravity hovering and extreme speeds with an advanced cloaking system that can project a starry night sky on its bottom equipped with hundreds of drop holes to allow a veritable army of elves to repel down to houses and enter into them to make their deliveries to a whole town in a matter of minutes.
Nevermore.