18 Dec
2003
18 Dec
'03
5:17 p.m.
However,
If we instead make a few different assumptions,
1) Santa has rigged a matter/anti-matter motor onto each reindeer
2) He has accelerated his sleigh extremely close to the speed of light before his journey even begins
3) He has created a "sheild" so that he and the reindeer don't get destroyed by running into each molecule in the atmosphere
at near light speed.
Then
Due to special relativistic effects if Santa simply maintains his velocity
1) To him it would seem that he has "boat-loads" of time
2) Since he is going so fast Lorentzian length contraction effects come into play so those chimneys seem huge (at least in the
direction of motion). So, he simply flies in, drops things off (which admittedly - have to decelerate VERY quickly) and
then he is off again.
However, now he is working on just "simply" warping space-time so he won't even have to break a sweat.
At least that is how he explained to me. <VBG>
Happy holidays,
Dale.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Cynthia Blue [mailto:cynweb@cynthiablue.net]
> Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2003 4:38 PM
> To: Utah Astronomy
> Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Off Topic Christmas Physics
>
>
> Off Topic but a bit science related! LOL
>
> > There are approximately 2 billion children (persons under
> 18) in the
> > world.
> >
> > However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim,
> Hindu, Jewish,
> > Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for
> Christmas night to 15%
> > of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference
> > Bureau, whoever they are). At an average (census) rate of
> 3.5 children
> > per house hold, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming
> that there is
> > at least one good child in each.
> >
> > Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the
> > different time zones and the rotation of the earth,
> logically 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 a good
> child, Santa has
> > around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out,
> jump down the
> > chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining
> presents under the
> > tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the
> > chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.
> >
> > Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed
> > around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false,
> but, hey; work
> > with me here), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a
> > total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom
> stops or breaks.
> > This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per
> second --- 3,149
> > times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest
> > man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky
> 27.4 miles
> > per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best)
> 15 miles per
> > hour.
> >
> > The payload of 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 over 500 thousand tons,
> not counting
> > Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull
> no more than
> > 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could
> pull 10 times
> > the normal amount, the job can't be done with 8 or even 9
> of them ---
> > Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not
> > counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or
> roughly 7
> > times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the
> monarch).
> >
> > We know that 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. The lead
> > pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per
> > second each.
> >
> > In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously (i.e.
> > explode and vaporize in such a way as to make flash paper jealous),
> > exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening
> > (earth-shattering..... literally) sonic booms in their wake.
> >
> > The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26
> thousandths of a
> > second, or just before Santa reached the 5th house on his trip. 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 seems
> > ludicrously slim based on the Coca-cola ads) would be
> pinned to the back
> > of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly
> crushing his bones
> > and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of red goo.
> >
> > In short ......... if Santa ever really existed, he's dead now.
> > Merry Christmas
>
> --
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