Hey Thoughty2 here.
Most children in the West are brought up being told that a jolly fat magic man delivers their
presents every year.
But as we grow older and wiser we start to think that that maybe isn’t the whole truth
and the disappearing mince pie and brandy has a lot more to do with your actual father
than Father Christmas.
But naysayers I’m here to present a different point of view, and go with me on this one.
What if Santa Claus, is real?
Well he could be.
And I’m not talking about magic but actual science.
What happens when we apply maths, formulas and the laws of motion to a large man with
a brandy addiction?
But surely it’s impossible for one man to deliver millions of presents to millions of
homes in just one night?
Not to mention the flying reindeer and sweat-shop elves.
Well depending on how naughty you’ve been this year, you might be pleasantly surprised…
let’s take a look at the actual physics behind Santa Claus and find out if we shouldn’t
be so quick to disbelieve in a very old Christmas legend.
So one of the major issues people have with the big K. Kringle is that he couldn’t possibly
visit every house on Earth in one night.
But the thing is he doesn’t have to.
To start, he reportedly only visits children, of which there are 2 billion of on Earth,
that’s people under the age of 18.
The average children per household across the world is roughly 3.5.
So that leaves 1 billion households for Santa to visit on Christmas Eve.
It’s commonly been accepted throughout history that Santa doesn’t visit children of non-Christian
religions such as Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist.
So if we factor out those households that leaves us with only 92 million homes for Santa
to visit, that’s significantly less.
Also Santa doesn’t have to fit all these into just 24 hours on Christmas eve.
If he travels from East to West he would have 31 hours in which to deliver presents, thanks
to timezone differences.
This leaves Santa with roughly 1/1000th of a second to get down the chimney, deliver
presents and consume whatever treats have been left out for him.
He would have to make 822 visits per second.
A challenge indeed.
And that brings us to the ever so complicated topic of flying reindeer.
There are an estimated 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and
there exists a bleedin snake that can fly, so who are we to say there aren’t flying
reindeer somewhere out there.
But one of the biggest obstacles stopping Santa from being real is not magical deer
but the payload he would have to carry.
Even if every child only received a small toy from Santa, around 800g on average, it
would result in a payload on Santa’s Sleigh weighting 302 million kilograms.
And that’s not even counting all the coal for all the horrible little terrors.
Now consider that Santa would have to travel at 650 miles per second to get around all
the required households in time for Christmas morning.
302 million kilograms traveling at that speed would exert a red-nose shattering 13.5 quintillion
joules of energy on each reindeer, due to the immense air pressure created at such speeds.
At those pressures Blitzen’s going to get blitzed and Comet will turn into an actual
comet.
In short, Santa, his sleigh and his reindeer would burst into a ball of flames and perish
instantaneously after setting off from the North Pole.
Soo yeah..
Merry Christmas!
But hold on kids, wipe away those tears, because Thoughty2 backed up by some scientific papers
he read, is about to save Christmas.
The strange science of Quantum mechanics allows for some physics defying spectacles that seem
to defy every scientific law you know.
And if we apply the laws of Quantum mechanics to Santa Claus then it’s possible that he
is a Macroscopic Quantum Object.
This would allow him to be in multiple places at once – meaning he could deliver presents
to every child on Earth simultaneously.
There’s also the added benefit that he can keep and eye on Mrs. Claus whilst he’s away
for the night.
Which is imperative after “Elf Gate” of Christmas Eve 1984.
Quantum mechanics is a branch of science that studies the very, very small; subatomic particles.
It is our current understanding that these tiny particles, such as electrons can be in
two or more places in the universe at the exact same time, as long as nobody is watching.
To prove this, scientists fired a single particle into an opaque plate that had two slits in
it.
The diffraction pattern on the other side of the plate revealed that this singular particle
actually passed through both slits at the same time.
However, when detectors were setup to monitor if the particle passed through each slit,
it only passed through one slit at a time, but never both.
Just because it was being watched.
To put it as simply as possible, this happens because the particle’s wavefunction collapses
when it is being observed, so it can no longer be in two places at once.
It’s similar to how Mrs. Claus can be in a different place than she’s supposed to
be, when Santa’s not watching.
This explains why Santa Claus can never be seen, because if he were his wavefunction
would collapse.
So if this is true how come we know Santa as a large jolly fellow and not an iddy-biddy
little subatomic particle?
Well scientists have observed large clusters of particles that seem to behave as one single
particle, admittedly these clusters of particles are nowhere near as large as our prospective
Mr Claus, but have some imagination for goodness sake.
So if Santa and his reindeer are a cluster of billions and billions of particles, acting
together as one – he could theoretically still adhere to the laws of quantum mechanics
and deliver lovely gifts to deserving children all over the world, in just one night.
This would also explain why his super secret Bond-villain, death star base of toy-construction
is tucked away in the North Pole.
Because quantum particles only behave in this manner in very, very cold environments.
Scientists have only observed the behavior at close to absolute zero; minus 273 C, which
is somewhat colder than the north pole.
But then, we have to allow for some magic at Christmas, don’t we?
Thanks for the view.