Proof that Santa doesn't exist...

[CB]

For all those who hate Christmas (and there are many of you) , here's something to cheer you up during this horrible period of time for you...

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There are approximately two billion children (persons under 1 in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, 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, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). 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 will accept for the purposes of our calculations), 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 -- 3,000 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 (two 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 ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine 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 seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the
monarch). 600,000 tons travelling 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, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) 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 pink goo.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

Merry Christmas.

CB

[Robbie]

Umm, you forget one incee wincee tiny but very important thing.

Santa is magical and everlasting.

And you've been a naughty boy ! :yes:

[Huu]

Number of households: This figure overlooks two key facts. First of
all, the first major schism in the Church split the Eastern Churches,
centered in Byzantium, from the Western, which remained centered in
Rome. This occurred prior to the Gregorian correction to the Julian
calendar. The Eastern churches (currently called Orthodox Churches)
do not recognize the Gregorian correction for liturgical events, and their
Christmas is, as a result, several days after that of the Western
Churches'. Thus, Santa gets two shots at delivering toys.

Secondly, the figure of 3.5 children per household is based on the gross
demographic average, which includes households with no children at all.
The number of children per household, when figured as an average for
households with children, would therefore have to be adjusted upward.
Also, the largest single Christian denomination is Roman Catholic, who,
as we all know, breed like rabbits. If you don't believe me, ask my four
brothers and two sisters--they'll back me up. Due to the predominance of
Catholics within Christian households, the total number of households
containing Christian children would have to be adjusted downward to
reflect the overloading of Catholics beyond a standard deviation from
the median.

Also, the assertion that each home would contain at least one good child
would be reasonable enough if there were in fact an even 3.5 children
per household. However, since the number of children per household is
distributed integrally, there is a significant number (on the order of
several million) of one-child Christian households. Even though only
children are notoriously spoiled--and therefore disproportionately
inclined toward being naughty--since it's the holidays we'll be generous
and give them a fifty-fifty chance of being nice. This removes one half
of the single-child households from Santa's delivery schedule, which has already been reduced by the removal of the Orthodox households from the first delivery run.

Santa's delivery run (speed, payload, etc.): These all suffer from
the dubious supposition that there is only one Santa Claus. The name
"Santa" is obviously either Spanish or Italian, two ethnic groups which
are both overwhelmingly Catholic. The last name Claus suggests a joint
German/Italian background. His beginnings, battling the Burgermeister
Meisterburger, suggest he grew up in Bavaria (also predominantly
Catholic). The Kaiser style helmets of the Burgermeister's guards,
coupled with the relative isolation of the village, suggest that his
youth was at the very beginning of Prussian influence in Germany. Thus,
Santa and Mrs. Claus have been together for well over one hundred years. If you think that after a hundred years of living at the North Pole with nights six months long that they remain childless, you either don't know Catholics or are unaware of the failure rate of the rhythm method. There have therefore been over five generations of Clauses, breeding like Catholics for over one hundred years. Since they are Catholic, their
exponential population increase would obviously have a gain higher than the world population as a whole. There have therefore been more than enough new Santas to overcome the population increase of the world. So in fact, Santa has an easier time of it now than he did when he first started out.

Santa dead, indeed--some people will twist any statistic to "prove" their
cynical theory.

MERRY XMAS!!
-huu

[charlieannear]

My Mum told me that if I stopped believing in Father Christmas he's stop me bringing me presents.
And I still get presents from him.
And I'm 30.
I rest my case.
:yes: