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.'"

Comments

Santa of course is not an effin elf.

[unity100]

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.

Re:Santa of course is not an effin elf.

[King InuYasha]

Oops, I'm stupid. Sinterklaas is a person, St. Nick to be precise. But part of Santa Claus comes from a Nordic legend about a gift-giving elf.

Re:Santa of course is not an effin elf.

[joocemann]

You say that like the tea partiers that havent noticed the new gop2.0 tea party. Tp 2007 != tp 2008.5+.

Santa in 2011 is a meme to drive materialism and consumerism. Some still apprecate family and friends by proxy, but the santa of old is nothing like the tool for chinese manufactured goods he has become.

Re:Santa of course is not an effin elf.

[Servaas]

That was as true in 2001 as it is now. Except then we all thought we were entitled to fast cars, big houses and snorting coke off of dead hookers. Were not. Thats why the world economy crashed and is still looking for a ladder back up.

Re:Santa of course is not an effin elf.

[chilvence]

Santa knows what you need, a heavy dose of lighten the fuck up

Re:Santa of course is not an effin elf.

[ackthpt]

Our current concept of Santa and reindeer has a lot to do with the poem "the night before Christmas" written in 1823. The character is referred to as a 'right jolly old elf'. Also the sleigh is miniature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Visit_from_St._Nicholas.

And current view of how Santa looks was created by Coca Cola for advertising.

To have a good look into the Santa Mythos, read Terry Pratchett's Hogfather - while a lot of humourous bits wound in, it provides some deep thinking. Crafty bugger, that Pratchett.

Re:Santa of course is not an effin elf.

[datavirtue]

Santa Claus is an archetype established by ancient Nordic shaman who used to gather mushrooms (amanita) in a sack and descend into his "hut" (forget the name of the structure) through the roof to process the mushrooms before handing them out at the yearly celebration that took place around this time. Christmas is an amalgamation of MANY year end (beginning) celebrations that were common over the entire world. This saint you refer to did not descend through the roof of homes in any way and deserves much less credit than the Nordic shaman who were stamped out by the Catholic church (although the tradition is still somewhat alive).

Any association of Jesus and Christianity with this yearly celebration is a VERY late hijacking of this universal festivity. Like other traditions, the Christianity cult had to subvert these cultures to facilitate conversion. Being highly valued cultural traditions they also had to preserve the festivities to ease the transition. Why are there so many "different" holidays that all occur around this time of year?

Re:Santa of course is not an effin elf.

[theshowmecanuck]

Manditory +1 Insightful Required Here

Re:Santa of course is not an effin elf.

[EdIII]

Wait......

Are you saying Santa used to hand out shrooms? No wonder people looked forward to the celebration, saw elves, flying reindeer, live snowmen, etc.

All we give him is cookies and milk in return.

Re:Santa of course is not an effin elf.

[mcgrew]

read Terry Pratchett's Hogfather - while a lot of humourous bits wound in, it provides some deep thinking.

That's true of every Pratchett book I've read. And rather than "humorous parts" I'd say "damned hilarious."

Re:Santa of course is not an effin elf.

[lattyware]

I love the vague terminology - God touched you? Explain exactly what that means. I'll believe something to do with gods the same way I'll believe anything else - give me enough proof to make it the most likely explanation. I'm not saying there is no posibility of a God, I'm saying that beleiving in one is like believing there is an elephant in my bathtub - It's highly unlikely, and if someone told me it was true, I wouldn't take them at their word.

You say there is no proof you can show me, then why should you expect me to believe it? I'm sure you'd think anyone getting an email from nigerian royalty promising lots of money and beleiving it was stupid, but an old book and promising eternal life? It's different how?

I'm open to the idea - If I'm wrong, you should be able to tell me why I'm wrong, and I'll take that on board. If you expect me to treat it differently because it's religion, or suspend logic for no reason, then no. Logic applies universally, you can't just choose where to apply it or not.

Re:Santa of course is not an effin elf.

[JWSmythe]

    Shhh... You're screwing with the religious zealots. They'll start quoting fire and brimstone passages out of their holy books. Then they'll flip through the peaceful and loving parts, and find reasons to kill you in very uncomfortable ways.

    You and I know perfectly well that there is no invisible friend running the universe, and the only kind of divine intervention that happens is choreographed and executed by a flesh and blood humans.

    Some of these people actually believe it. Most of their holy books say that by doubting them, you are their evil, and you must be punished. ... and you may say you have an elephant in your bathtub, but I have an undetectable transdimensional leprechaun in a box. Don't ever try to open the box, or he'll immediately move to another dimension. Once you believe in him, I'll introduce you to the invisible dragon in the garage. My girlfriend told me that he's there. He sucks the life out of car batteries, and changes my preset radio stations when I'm out of town.

Re:Santa of course is not an effin elf.

[lattyware]

To be fair to them, I agree with Penn Jillette that if someone does believe in a religion, it's equally insane not to expect them to be verbal about it. The example he gives is that if I'm stood in front of you on train tracks, and you hear a train coming - but I tell you that the train doesn't exist, you are still going to push me off the tracks (presuming that you are not too scared of getting sued, enjoy seeing people die, etc...). If someone believes I am going to burn in hell for eternity because I don't beleive in God, then I can understand them trying to change my viewpoint.

Doesn't stop them being illogical mind.

Re:Santa of course is not an effin elf.

[JWSmythe]

    You're probably right.

    I just have a hard time reconciling the fact that there are over 10,000 religions on this planet, and the cultists in each believe that they are right, and want you to convert to their way. No matter what, it's a lose-lose situation. If you don't believe their way, you're wrong. If you do finally accept their way, that means you are wrong in the minds of the thousands of others groups.

    I guess that's part of why holy wars work. Unless one group manages to gain 100% acceptance, they'll always have someone to fight against.

Re:Santa of course is not an effin elf.

[LordLimecat]

Aside from my utter bewilderment why parent got a troll moderation (you may think hes crazy and disagree with him, but thats certainly not a troll post), Ill respond, courteously, since you were courteous.

Believing in God does not require intellectual suicide, nor does it require a suspension of logic. There are, if you cared to read up on it, countless philosophers who came from the church-- for example, one of my favorites, Pascal, was very probably either Protestant or Catholic. He isnt exactly someone you would accuse of being daft in regard to logic, not after reading his Pensees.

Why then do there seem to be religious people who ask you to "just believe"? I cannot answer for them, but I can point out that probably 80% of people accept scientific "truths" without having the capability or expertise to vet or judge them for reliability. Truths they may be, but for most people they are "unjustified truths". For some people, this includes everything outside of their particular field. Others have a deeper knowledge, but all of us at the end must accept some of what we are told by others to be true, with no other proof than our trust in their reliability.

As an example, neither I, nor (I would hazard) 90% of slashdot can prove or justify their belief that there is a black hole at the center of the Milky Way. I have a "chain of trust" that leads me to accept it as a "tentative fact", but nothing more-- I certainly have not reviewed the evidence in detail, and would be utterly out of my element attempting to do so without hours, days, or months of study.

Religions can be similar. I personally have a great number of reasons why I accept the claims of christianity. I believe there is an element of "Gods hand" in all of this-- that I believe in part because it was part of his plan-- but my mind is not made so that I can simply leave it at that and quell my curiosity. It demands reasons and justifications for everything I believe-- I sometimes feel like Descartes who wondered how he could justify his belief that he even existed. Yet after all of my questioning, reasoning, and researching, I continually find myself agreeing that my beliefs, for the most part, hold up (and that occasionally, there are parts that are in fact mistaken).

Regarding "being told", I do ask my preacher, and my elders (both in a "church elder", and in an "older, wiser person" sense) questions often; but I have reasons to trust their sincerity, their knowledge in the topics I ask them, and I can always check their statements (which are based on biblical interpretation) on what the bible actually says, and on what reality seems to say. There is a degree of trust, to be sure-- everything I am told when I ask a question, on any topic, will inevitably shape my thought processes to some degree-- but it is not unfounded, and it is unavoidable on any subject where learning is desirable and time is limited. One asks questions ("what causes gravity") because one does not have time to derive the answers to every question on ones own, but you still use your intellect to vet the answers.

I think it is a mistake for someone of any belief to assume that because others believe differently, they must be mentally defective or lack logical capabilities. This is called hubris, and is unfounded: There have been brilliant men throughout the ages of various faiths. The truth is independent of what any of us think about these topics, but that does not mean there are not intelligent people who can be wrong; and it does not mean that you yourself cannot accept that you could be mistaken, if not in your conclusion, at least in your arguments.

Re:Santa of course is not an effin elf.

[Anonymous Coward]

the Christianity cult

Posted on the second holiest day for Christians, on Christmas of all days. Damn, you get troll of the year, asshole.

By any reasonable definition, early Christianity was a cult; they just managed to get some followers in key positions (like Emperors) and it snowballed from there. Then what Christianity morphed into got some money behind it and wanted to expand its influence, and borrowing from existing popular celebrations made it easier to snarf converts. I don't have a lot of respect for a lot of institutional christianity from about the 3rd-20th centuries.

That said, if Jesus of Nazareth was alive today, he'd be involved in the Occupy movement; take that statement however you like but remember that however you take it is more of a reflection on you that on Jesus, who had no trouble taking on the moneylenders in the temple.

Jesus was way cool, but some of his followers have been real dicks.

Re:slow news day...

[DreadfulGrape]

Google.

Obligatory

[DragonHawk]

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
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
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.

Re:Obligatory

[vikingpower]

... 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - - - this is four times the weight of Queen Elizabeth.

My gawd, the poor woman !! I now understand why she so sparingly appears in public. Being so overweight must be horrible.

Re:Obligatory

[tunabomber]

...would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force

No wonder my stocking had a big diamond in it this morning. It USED to be a hunk of coal.

Re:Obligatory

[mabhatter654]

It can all be explained because The Dioctor helped him out!

This isn't original... Picked it up somewhere...

The Doctor had some left over TARDIS parts and built St. Nick a sleigh from them! Only it's time locked to Christmas Eve... So Santa behaves. That allows Santa to deliver presents all year round. Because the Sleigh is "bigger on the inside" there is plenty of room for gifts. (sadly, Santa didn't get a library or pool) that also accounts for the flying reindeer... But the might be a special breed from the future?

Re:Obligatory

[TeknoHog]

Dude, RTFA. It clearly explains how he uses relativity clouds to achieve these feets.

Reindeer don't have feets, they has hoofz. As for relativity, the one at the front is called Rudolf the Red-shift Reindeer.

Meh ...

[lennier1]

Kinda late. The Finns already made a documentary on that topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Exports

Oh, thank god

[Bieeanda]

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.

He's got...

[tunabomber]

... 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.

Re:He's got...

[houghi]

So basically he is all for Free, but not for Open.

Re:slow news day...

[Seumas]

At least it isn't April 1st. Slashdot turns into a flaming piece of shit for about 48 hours every year at that time. This is not even remotely as stupid as it gets on that day.

Re:slow news day...

[mabhatter654]

Warehouse 13

Re:just say magic and don't milk it.

[Nyder]

enough said.

Yes, Milk and Cookies, he needs to refuel his energy between stops.

Obligatory Occupy

[FairAndHateful]

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!

This explains everything!

[bradley13]

"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...

The real mystery...

[billybob_jcv]

... 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.
 

As a parent

[chill]

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.

Re:Occam's Razor

[DesScorp]

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.

Oh joy. Scrooge has a Slashdot account.

Actually, it's already disproven

[AliasMarlowe]

If Santa was moving so fast, how come NORAD can track him, and post videos of him at major cities...

Re:Actually, it's already disproven

[chill]

Because they're the government, so they are lying to you. Duh! That's a given.

And where is your tin foil hat?

Re:How about Hannukah?

[theshowmecanuck]

Sorry, we're talking about a fork of Judaism. You need to log in to a different project.