> >Is there a Santa?
> >
> >A little girl named Virginia asked the New York Times if there was a
Santa
> >Claus. The reply is now famous.
> >
> >Someone thought it would be fun to ask the scientists at NASA the same
> >question. Here is their reply:
> >
> >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 seen.
> >
> >There are 2 000 000 000 children (under 18) in the world. But since Santa
> >doesn't appear to handle Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish children,
that
> >reduces the workload to15 % of the total - 138 000 000 or so. At an
average
> >rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91 800 000 homes. One presumes
> >there is at least one good child in each. Santa has 31 h of Christmas to
> >work with, thanks to time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming
he
> >travels east to west. This works out to 822.6 visits per second.
> >
> >This is to say that for each household with good children, Santa has 1 ms
to
> >park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings,
> >distribute the remaining gifts under the tree, eat snacks, get back up
the
> >chimney, get back into the sleigh, and move to the next house.
> >
> >Assuming that each of these 91 800 000 houses are distributed evenly
(which
> >we know to be false but for the sake of these calculations we will
accept)
> >we are now talking about 1.25 km per household, a total trip of 121.5 Gm
> >(gigametres), not counting bathroom stops. This means that Santa's sleigh
is
> >travelling at 1000 km/s (kilometres per second), 3000 times the speed of
> >sound.
> >
> >For comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe
moves
> >at a poky 44 km/s. The average reindeer runs at 25 km/h (7 m/s). The
> >sleigh's payload adds another interesting element. Assuming that each
child
> >gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (1 kg), the sleigh is
> >carrying 300 Gg (gigagrams), not counting Santa, who is invariably
described
> >as overweight.
> >
> >On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 150 kg. Even
granting
> >that "flying reindeer" (see first paragraph) could pull TEN TIMES the
usual
> >amount, we cannot do the job with 8 or even 9. We need 214 000 reindeer.
> >This increases the weight, not even counting the sleigh, to 350 Gg.
Again,
> >for comparison this is 4 times the weight of the British liner Queen
> >Elizabeth II.
> >
> >350 Gg travelling at 1000 km/s creates an enormous air resistance. This
will
> >heat the reindeer in the same manner as a spacecraft re-entering the
earth's
> >atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 EW (exawatts)
EACH.
> >In short, they will burst in flame almost instantaneously, exposing the
next
> >pair of reindeer, and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.
> >
> >The entire team will be vaporized within 4.26 ms. Santa, meanwhile, will
be
> >subjected to g-forces 17 500.06 times the force due to gravity. A 150 kg
> >Santa would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 19.25 MN (meganewtons)
of
> >force.
> >
> >CONCLUSION: There was a Santa, but he's dead now.
