BlameThePixel!

Is there a Santa Claus? - a physicist view

Consider the following:

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 1 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.

(Taken from http://www.physlink.com/Fun/IsThereSanta.cfm )

Of course Father Christmas exists, and he can visit arbitrarily as many children has he pleases in as short a time as is convenient, barring mid-air reindeer pile- ups. The reason is that Father Christmas is a Macroscopic Quantum Object.

Let me explain. It is a feature of the quantum world that particles - such as electrons - can be in more than one place at a time, provided that nobody is watching. In a famous experiment known as the "two-slit" test, physicists have been able to fire a single particle at an opaque plate with two separate slits in it. The diffraction pattern seen on the other side of the slits suggests that the particle passes through both holes at once and interacts with itself. However, if detectors are placed at the slits, to see which slit the particle passes through, the diffraction pattern disappears, and the particle can be seen to pass through either one slit or the other, but not both.

The key lies in the fact of observation. Provided that nobody seeks to measure the effect with more than a certain amount of precision, the particle keeps all its options open. But if someone looks too closely, the particle makes its choice. In the language of physics, its quantum wavefunction collapses.

Now, let's think of Father Christmas as a particle, obeying the rules of the quantum world. Following the logic of the two-slit experiment, it is perfectly possible for him to visit all the good children of the world simultaneously, provided that he does so unseen. If he is spotted, his wavefunction will collapse and he will be revealed as your Dad with a comedy beard after all. The quantum nature of Father Christmas explains the taboo against seeing him do his job - which Dawkins does not explain.

But there's more. It is possible to object that Father Christmas is far too large, rubicund and jolly to be a particle. In the real-life, macroscopic world of people, elves and flying reindeer, the quantum behaviour of each of the squillions of particles from which we are made averages out, so what we see is the everyday phenomenon of causes preceding effects, and people who can never be in two places at once.

Cynics might attribute this last consequence to the deficiencies of Railtrack, but it is a fact that real people, even bearded men with red hats and big boots, tend to be found in discrete locations, irrespective of whether they are being watched or not.

This objection doesn't wash, however, because it is possible to have macroscopic quantum objects that are larger than single particles. Scientists have managed to choreograph large clusters of atoms to behave as if they were just one particle, in a kind of nanoscopic Busby Berkeley routine. Admittedly, these clusters are too small to see with the naked eye, let alone qualify as cheerful red- faced men with sacks full of gifts, but the point is made.

Importantly, these macroscopic quantum objects observe the rules of the quantum world when cooled to within a whisker of absolute zero - minus 273 C. Any warmer than this, and the choreography breaks down and the clusters behave like any old bunch of atoms.

Nevertheless, in this frigidity might lie an explanation for another feature of Father Christmas that Dawkins neglects to explain - the undeniable fact that Father Christmas traditionally inhabits cold places, such as Lapland or the North Pole. OK, so neither of these places gets as chilly as absolute zero, but it must count for something that no deserving child would address their wish list to hot places such as, say, Borneo or Brazil. The very idea is quite ridiculous. QED (which stands for Quantum Electrodynamics, as any fule kno.)


http://education.guardian.co.uk/xmas2000/story/0,7348,411462,00.html

no santa does not exist, thats why i purchased $213.47 worth of presents for family and friends

OMFG

YOU ARE WRONG

then santa better bring me my fucking money back!

keeper, the point wishta was making is that it's possible for santa to exist, or that he could have existed at some point. santa supposedly all-knowing when it comes to people, so he could, logically, only appear at the houses of people who truly and honestly believe in him, so that he would never be seen. as wish explained, if he IS seen the wavefunction would collapse and he would have to exist in only one place. so, logically, he would only visit those who he knew to believe, and who he knew to be asleep, so that he could visit quietly and safely. people who have even the slightest doubt would merely have to buy their own gifts, leaving those who DO believe to look like fools when they say that santa exists; therefore cause said people to keep their mouths shut about it, and merely accepting that santa visits them yearly. the fact that kids believe in santa until their parents tell them he doesn't exist also leads to the conclusion that there would be at least a FEW people left on earth who believe, and who would get presents every year.

Hasn't this thread already been done in some other recent thread? I think it was the festive jokes one...

Ive seen this thread somewhere before, but not here..I remember the part about muslums and shit..



Wrong about there being no santa? Santa doesn't exist. The term "saint nicholas" came from some german town or whatever..I read it in they newspaper for some class assignment..but regaurdless, if you really think santa exsits, you are most likely under 6. But I guess everybody has their own opinions.


Stoner Werm

there was a guy from an ancient village who gave out gifts, was fat, and old. he was part of (at least) the basis of the santa claus legend.

In more detail, he was a man who, one day, was in the general neighborhood. He noticed a family in poverty. They'd filthy socks that they hung up (well, stockings actually.). Saint Nick came in via window, or something And put a gold coin in one of the girls' stockings. In later years, he put gold coins in the other family members' stockings. That's what I'd been taught. That's at least where the stocking stuffer tradition originates

... Ah ha. Maybe there are many santas... like 3 for every square mile of the world... making the load of a sleigh less than 1 ton... because an average sized City block has about 18-24 houses on it. taking out other religions... probably only 15 cristian households. and not every house would have children in it.

I was in a bad mood when i posted before.

Sanata Clause, Saintnicholas, or Father Christmas; what ever you want to call him does not accually exist. Nor did he ever.

The Spirit of this being is to live in every heart, as it did when the wise men brought gifts or Gold and Mur to Jesus Christ on January 6 0001 AD.

Un fortinatly the true spirit of Christmas has been lost by most people. Big Business has comertialized Christmas to the point that christmas items are out in October.

For Christmas I try not to buy things for my family, other then clothing. I have cut a thing wafer from a tree, and used a wood burning kit to make something for my mother with her name on it. I aplied 5 layers of polyurathane and then wraped it up when it was dry.

Christmas is about giving to those you love (Which is why even bad kids get stuff). Big business would rather you believed that the amount of money you spend determines how much you love your family and friends.

BUT, I have shot big business in the ass, doing hat i have done for my mother. Its nicely crafted and one of a kind. This wasn't some mass marketed project that everyother mom in the neiborhood got.

meh... ive gone off the point here a bit.

In a physical form there has never been a santa. But Like the 3 wisemen, i should hope that the spirit of giving lives with in you all, not just around christmas, but all year round.

AS a final note, My birthday is christmas day. Let no one call me a liar i will scan my goverment issued photo ID.

OMFG!
Santa sure does exist, when I opened my prezzies this morning, there was no tags saying "from mum" or "from dad" as usual.


If, for some reason. Somebody thinks I actual think he exits, your a moron.

I believe Santa does exist. He's just an enourmous ammount of energy children that believed in him, have put into him, causing him to manifest into a form of energetic matter. Every year he keeps getting more powerful

Wait, you just contradicted your self. Hah.
It realy is a bad idea to do that, you know...