Maybe it was pulled by a scirocco!!!

["Mike" <lerb@redrose.net>]

>Regarding Santa...
>
>There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) 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 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 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 stocking,
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 onto 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 thousands tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a
>conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds.
>
>Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 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 traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance -
>this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft
reentering
>the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 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 vaporized 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 17,000 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
>
>
>
>
>


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