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The
following report has been produced as a result of the controversy that rages
regarding the existence of Santa Claus (CRRESC).
The authors wish it known that they do not hold any belief as to the
existence or otherwise, but has applied standard recursive simplification
techniques (SRST) to conclude
a
pragmatic and scientific (PraSt) view of the topic. 1.
No known species of reindeer can fly.
There are, however, 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be
classified and whilst most are insects and germs, this does NOT completely rule
out flying reindeer, which only Santa has seen. 2.
There are 2,000,000,000 children in the world (i.e. persons under the age
of 18). However, as Santa does not
appear to handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist children, that reduces his
workload to 15% of the total, i.e. 378,000,000 (source – Population Reference
Bureau). At an average (Census)
rate of 3.5 children per household, that means that there are 91,800,000 homes
to visit. This assumes one good
child in each home. 3.
Santa has 31 hours at Christmas to work with. Thanks to the different
time zones and rotation of the Earth, assuming an East to West travel (which
seems logical). This means that he
makes 8.22 visits per second. Thus
for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000 of a second to
park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking,
distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat snacks left, get back up
chimney, get back onto sleigh and move to the next house.
Assuming that each of the 91,800,000 stops are evenly distributed around
the Earth; which of course we know to be false, but for the purposes of the
calculation we will accept, we are talking of 0.78 miles per household.
This means that Santa has to travel 75,500,000 miles, not counting stops
to do what most of us need to do at least every 31 hours plus feeding etc. This means that Santa moves at 650 miles per second, or 3000 times the speed of sound. For the purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space craft, moves at 27.4 miles per second. A conventional reindeer can move at about 15 miles per hour. 4.
The payload of the sleigh adds another element.
Assuming that each child gets a medium sized Lego, at 2lbs. The sleigh
carries 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as
overweight. On land, a professional
reindeer can pull 300lbs. maximum. Even
granting that “flying reindeer” can potentially pull TEN times the standard
amount, we cannot do the job with 8 or even 9 reindeer.
We would need 214,000 reindeer. This
will increase the payload to 353,400 tons, i.e. FOUR times the weight of the
QE2. 5.
353.400 tons moving at 650 miles per second create a large air
resistance. This will heat the
reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3
quintillion joules of energy per second each.
Thus they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, and expose the
next reindeer and create a deafening sonic boom in their wake.
The entire reindeer team will vaporise in 4.26/1000 of a second.
Santa will be exposed to a centrifugal force of 17,500.06 times the force
of gravity. A 250lb. Santa, which
seems ludicrously slim, would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by a force of
4,315,015 lbs. of force. In
conclusion, therefore, if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve,
he’s dead now. All the best for Christmas HHHPP Frank (the Plank) Tank
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