Stans kortaste blogg

Så här års drivs Geten av sin önskan att vara en god och nyttig samhällsmedborgare till att göra en insats för att dämpa den allt värre julhetsen. Eftersom jag är den jag är riktar jag min uppmärksamhet mot själva fokus för cirkusen - tomten himself - och tar mig an honom med logik och vetenskap. Det vill säga, jag dammar av denna gamla skrift, som cirkulerade per mejl långt innan webben blev stor. Många har säkert läst den någon gång men eftersom allmänheten inte riktigt verkar ha tagit den till sitt hjärta är det hög tid för en nypublicering.

Is There a Santa Clause?
A scientific analysis

1. There are no known species of reindeer that can fly. However, 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 approximately two billion children, i.e. persons under the age of 18, in the world. Since Santa doesn't appear to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, his workload is reduced to 15% of the total, i.e. 378 million. At an averagerate of 3.5 children per household, and assuming that there is at least one good child in each home, that's 91.8 million homes.

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 at least one good child, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park his sleigh, hop out, 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 we, of course, know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations will accept), we are now talking about 0.78 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 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 travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a 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 vaporised 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.