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Is there a Santa Claus?

   
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   1) No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are 300,000
   speciesof living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of
   these are insectsand germs, this does not completely rule out flying
   reindeer which onlySanta has ever seen.
   
   2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world.
   Butsince Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish
   and Buddhistchildren, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total --
   378 millionaccording to Population Reference Bureau. At an average
   (census) rate of3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million
   homes.One presumes there'sat least one good child in each.
   
   3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the
   differenttime zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels
   east towest (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per
   second.This is to say that for each Christian household with good
   children,Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the
   sleigh, jumpdown the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the
   remaining presentsunder the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left,
   get back up thechimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the
   next house.
   
   Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly
   distributedaround the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but
   for the purposesof our calculations we will accept), we are now
   talking about .78 miles perhousehold, a total trip of 75-1/2 million
   miles, not counting stops to dowhat most of us must do at least once
   every 31 hours, plus feeding andetc... 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,
   theUlysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second. A
   conventionalreindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.
   
   4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element.
   Assumingthat each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set
   (2pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa,
   who isinvariably described as overweight. On land, conventional
   reindeer canpull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying
   reindeer" (seepoint #1) could pull ten times the normal amount, we
   cannot do the jobwith eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer.
   This increases thepayload -- not even counting the weight of the
   sleigh -- to 353,430 tons.
   
   5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous
   airresistance -- this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as
   aspacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of
   reindeerwill absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy. Per second.
   Each. Inshort, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously,
   exposing thereindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in
   their wake.The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26
   thousandths of asecond. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to
   centrifugal forces17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound
   Santa (which seemsludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his
   sleigh by 4,315,015pounds of force.
   
   In conclusion: If Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve,
   he's dead now.