Actually, as I think about it, going so fast just makes his time crunch much worse - because time is slowed down in the "accelerated" frame - so he would appear to be doing things very slowly (to us). Gotta make sure I'm in the right reference frame <g>. So, obviously he lied - no wonder he needs a space-time warping system.
-----Original Message----- From: Dale Hooper Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2003 5:16 PM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: RE: [Utah-astronomy] Off Topic Christmas Physics
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.