Sorry Virginia, there is no Santa

Sorry Virginia, there is no Santa

[Jim Corbett]

                          IS THERE A 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 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 seemes 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 anount, 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 travelling at 650 miles per second creates enourmous
   air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as
   spacecrafts 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.

Merry Christmas one and all,

Jim Corbett 
BLINDNET@reach.net 

Jim Corbett 
BLINDNET@reach.net

Re: Sorry Virginia, there is no Santa

[Jered Floyd]

>                         IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?

This was funny the first 20 times it was sent to me.  It is no longer funny.
It doesn't even elicit a chuckle, and rather invokes pain and anger.  I'd
like to request of everyone here:

   Please, please, no matter HOW amusing or novel you think something is,
   DON'T send it to a mailing list unless it's RELEVANT! Sorry to yell.
   Thank you.

--Jered
jered@mit.edu