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11/25/2006 12:37:34 PM · #1 |
well since it is the holidays, I thought we should be reminded of certain things:
According to the Population Reference Bureau, there are approximately 2 billion children (persons under eighteen) in the world. However, since Santa does not seem to 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. At an average rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each house.
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. 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 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.
Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth, we are now talking about 0.78 miles between 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 15 miles per hour at best.
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).
600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance; this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. Rudolph, the leading reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second. In short, he would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing each reindeer behind him to the same fate in succession; and causing deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.2 thousandths of a second upon launching from the North Pole. 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 reasonable based on common depictions) 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.
Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. |
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11/25/2006 12:47:51 PM · #2 |
Obviously, you've never heard of "delegation" and "decentralization" :-) Santa is alive and well, and he's an organizational wizard. He delegates his responsibilities on a per-household basis, usually (but not always) incorporating the resident male parent into his network. He also seeds commercial spaces with Santa-surrogates who handle the PR chores for him. You will often find them in department stores, and in shopping malls in general.
The whole process is a marvel of decentralization, and has been studied in business schools for decades.
Robt. |
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11/25/2006 12:52:51 PM · #3 |
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.)
From this explanation: Father Christmas Explained
Message edited by author 2006-11-25 12:54:03. |
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12/05/2006 03:02:57 PM · #4 |
| So what shutter speed should I use to photograph santa??? |
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12/05/2006 03:09:02 PM · #5 |
North Pole could be anywhere....
North Pole
Believe in what is in your heart and soul.
Your destiny is your own control.
Happiness comes from with in.
Sadness could never win.
Pass on to the future a little more hope.
Admire space through a telescope..
A child see's more than adults do..
Some children never have a clue...
Some adults have giving up on believing too.
I tell you though, I am a adult but I still will always believe in Santa Clause making his toys at the North Pole..
Accomplishing task to fullfill his goals.
Checking his list for all the good or bad kids,
Preparing for another year before the next ends.
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12/05/2006 03:10:49 PM · #6 |
dude, haven't you heard of cloning!
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12/05/2006 03:13:51 PM · #7 |
Originally posted by notonline:
So what shutter speed should I use to photograph santa??? |
ROFLMAO
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12/05/2006 04:15:07 PM · #8 |
Don't forget the nice and naughty lists. When you're talking nice kids, that narrows the number of kids down to about... 12 or so.
Message edited by author 2006-12-05 16:15:43.
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12/05/2006 04:35:29 PM · #9 |
Peterish, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Peterish, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Peterish, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Peterishias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Peterish, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Peterish, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!
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12/05/2006 04:38:03 PM · #10 |
dude, santa stops time.
Duh!
Message edited by author 2006-12-05 16:38:10.
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12/05/2006 05:46:57 PM · #11 |
I belive in Santa:
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