Do you believe in Santa Claus? Science proves you should
Jaded children around the world have been questioning Santa’s existence with greater gusto each year. The inquisition often begins when a jilted young one does not receive the favored present of their heart’s desires, in spite of much soul pouring to a mall-variety, costumed faker. But just because shady entrepreneurs dress up like Santa for profit does not mean that the real article does not exist. What this debate needs is a thorough scientific analysis to sort myth from reality. Let’s see what science has to say about theories most often used to rob the world of Christmas spirit and disprove one of the last pure symbols of secular generosity and commercialism.
How does Santa visit all the children of the world in one night?First, a few facts. Around 2 billion inhabitants of earth are under the age of 18, but many do not celebrate Christmas. If we remove from Santa’s list children who do not celebrate Christmas such as Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Atheist Nudist Colony Dwellers we’re really only dealing with about 400 million kiddos. Those juveniles are concentrated in 125 million households, orphanages and children’s correctional facilities.
As everyone who studies Santa Lore knows, the old man has more than a typical evening to work with. Because of the rotation of the earth and time zone changes, Santa has about 30 hours of night to get the job done, assuming he begins in Australia and works his way west, finishing up in Hawaii with a Festive Mai Tai.
If an average humanoid took about 30 minutes to stop at a house, jump down the chimney, leave the presents, eat a few cookies and take off again, they would require about 62 million hours or 7000 years. Fortunately for all the good boys and girls of the world, Santa is no average humanoid.
Two factors are required for Santa’s logistical timeframe to work: Speed and time. As we all learned in high-school physics—at least those of us who weren’t sniffing glue in the back of the classroom—the faster one moves, the slower time goes for those observing the moving object. If bound by the pedestrian speeds of anthropoid-made objects, speed and time don’t do much for Santa. For example, even at the speed of the fastest man made object, Nasa’s Juno spacecraft which travels at a rate of 90,000 miles per hour, it would still take about 57 days to reach every house, assuming the houses were separated by an average of 1 mile. That’s getting closer, but not close enough.
Recently, a sub-atomic particle neutrino has been clocked at traveling 186,415 miles per second, just faster than light. That’s a blistering 669 million miles per hour. At that speed, Santa could distribute presents to all the children of the world in just over 11 minutes. If Santa was made up of sub-atomic neutrino particles, he could take a leisurely place, say a mere 1% of his top speed and still get done in time to enjoy a round of gold with the Easter bunny in Maui. This fact is supported by the Santa from Miracle on 34th street, who was of course an actor, but might have had contact with the real Santa as part of his role research.
How do reindeer fly?
It’s important to realize that scientists have only identified 2 million species of creature of earth. That might sound like a lot, but some estimate that as many as 100 million exist. It seems likely that of those 98% of species not yet identified there could be such thing as a large flying mammal that resembles a reindeer.
Second, there are numerous methods for achieving flight. No one marvels at the brightly colored balloons a clown sells at the fair, and yet these objects are capable of soaring high into the sky until they pop, float back to earth and become part of a beaver’s living room decor, all for less with a few cents worth of helium.
Thought the reindeer could be lighter than air, it’s more likely they achieve flight through their speed. Acceleration is used as the primary mechanism for breaking out of low-earth orbit. Jets can fly upside down or straight up into their sky by virtue of their speed. The faster airplanes travel, the less wing surface area is needed to stay aloft. Wasps and other nasty little insects fly because their wings move super-duper fast. It seems logical that reindeer traveling at 1/100th the speed of light as noted above would not have any problem flying.
How does Santa know which children are naughty or nice?
This one would be a lot more difficult to answer before the internet age. But today, with so many parents publicly chronically stories about the stupid things their children do and say on Facebook, and of course shamelessly sharing pictures of their children’s misdeeds on Instagram, all Santa needs is a few advanced computers, a robust relationship database management software and a few elves adept at big data analysis. In 2014, 2.3 zettabytes of data is created every day. That’s a billion gigabytes, or something like two hundred million photos. That’s a whole lot of data for the Naughty or Nice Department to sort through. All this data could be fed into a CRM database like Salesforce for Nonprofits and a scoring system could be used to evaluate the naughtiness of each child. Any positive story about the child would result in a positive one score, while a negative experience would result in a negative one score. If the child had a positive score by Christmas Eve, he or she would receive their presents. Otherwise, coal.
How does Santa get down a chimney, especially if a house does not have one?
One of Santa’s biggest perception problems is the contradiction between his chubby/jolly appearance and his need to fit down chimneys in order to deliver presents. Fortunately for Santa, the atoms that make up that oversized belly, and the rest of this body, are made up primarily of empty space. Atoms are, like many Americans, mostly empty nothingness. Specifically, 99.999999% nothingness. To illustrate, if an atom was the size of a football stadium its nucleus would be about the size of a grape, sitting on the 50 yard line, and its electrons would be little grains of salt swirling around somewhere near those fancy skyboxes.
All Santa would need to do to fit into almost any chimney would be to reduce his size by 90%. Let’s say for example that he is 36” wide at his waist (he does eat a lot of cookies after all). At 90% reduction, he would be a slim 3.6 inches wide. That’s about the size of a Ken doll, if Ken spent his weekends drinking beer and watching football.
And if Santa encountered a home without a proper chimney, he could drop his size by another 90% and he would be a mere 1/3” of an inch wide. That’s about the size of those pink and blue people in the board game Life. A Santa that size should be able to shimmy through a leak in the roof. Even at this size, Santa’s atoms would still be almost entirely emptiness. If his nuclei and electrons remained the same size as the above analogy, instead of being spread across a football stadium, the grape and grains of salt would be spread across the space of a tennis ball court.
Interestingly, Santa would still weigh the same amount no matter how small he was. Therefore, he would have to be extra careful to not step on anyone’s toe. In fact, he would do well to not shrink more than was necessary. Let’s assume Santa weighs 300lbs. If he concentrated all that weight into a Life game sized body, he would cut right through most roofs. Therefore, he would be well advised to utilize his flying abilities as to not destroy anything with his out of proportion mass.
And perhaps the most important question of all, how does Santa eat all those cookies without gaining too much weight?
This question has stumped humans for millennia, not only by those interested in Santa’s existence, but by men and women around the world who would like to devour sugary sweets during the holidays without screwing up their forthcoming new year’s resolutions to lose ten pounds.
First, the facts. A typical butter cookie contains about 130 calories. Wash that down with a quarter cup swig of 1% milk and you’re up to a little more than 150 calories. Every 3500 calories consumed equals about a pound of extra baggage, distributed unequally in ares such as love handles, beer gut and buttocks. That means every 23 houses Santa visits, he’d gain a pound. Much to Mrs. Claus’s chagrin, Santa would accumulate about 5.5 million pounds between Christmas eve and Christmas day, significantly overachieving on a quest to become the heaviest man in the Guinness Book of World Records. That spot, for those keeping track, is currently held by Manuel Uribe who weighed 1230 lbs at his peak.
Though most of us slaves-to-the-scale are trying to stay south of 2000 calories per day, some lucky devils get to gorge on as much as 10,000 calories. These athletes not only have incredibly hot bodies, but also get to each chocolate cake whenever they like. Their secret is burning energy as the calories go down the pipe. In order for Santa to maintain his 2000 calories diet, all he needs to do is burn 18,759,998,000 over the course of his Christmas Eve work shift. Fortunately, Santa is going to expend a lot of energy delivering all those presents. Workout specialists, a career that contains a disproportionate number of people named Jake, estimate that an average male burns about 100 calories per mile ran, but if you run really fast, you burn more calories per mile. While Santa isn’t running from house to house, he is certainly engaging in aerobics by hustling up and down all those chimneys and stove pipes. Furthermore, maintaining an average speed of 1/100th the speed of light would also help Santa work up a nice sweat.
If Santa could manage to burn 150 calories per mile, he’ll use up exactly the number of calories he gained. And if he managed to burn just 151 calories per mile, he’d lose 34,000 lbs. He could probably win Biggest Loser with a diet plan like that.
In closing…
Given the scientific evidence, Santa’s existence is not only possible, but likely. I hope you’ll join me in putting out a plate of cookies and milk and getting to bed early this Christmas Eve just in case he is real. Given today’s tough economy, we wouldn’t want to miss out on a few extra presents for the kids.
Do you believe in Santa Claus?
More about the Evan Burl Book Release and Our Weekly Giveaway
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Jessica Mamac, Kristen Patinka, Lou Scott, Scott Bothel, John Wargowsky, Tammy Dalley, Carl Smith, Heather Miles, Sally Hannoush, Christopher Burrell, Cathy Smith, Blake Goldstein, Katrina Epperson, Janae Schiele, Vanessa Rasanen, Katrina Umland, Deanna Wiseburn, Hope Clippinger, Rebecca Ann Baker, Lisa Whitten, Gavin Imes, Robin Baker, April Reynolds, Gloria Macioci Blaney
