If we estimate that each child receives a present (or lump of coal) that is an average of 5 lbs. (Some presents like bicycles may weigh 20+ lbs. Some presents like video games and underwear may weigh only a couple lbs. Some children also receive multiple presents from Santa. We will give Santa the benefit of the doubt and say it averages to 5 lbs. total per child.), then at max capacity, if Santa is carrying gifts for 400 million children in his magic bag, he is hauling 2 billion pounds of cargo on his sleigh. (Based on a post Santa made in his blog at
www.santa.com on Christmas morning 2007, we know that Santa has a magic bag and that he can carry all these presents. He fits all of them in the bag using a contraption he refers to as a “Present Compactor.”)
While flying at his average speed and carrying his average amount of cargo (half his maximum or 1 billion pounds), Santa has 2.868x1020 joules of kinetic energy (equivalent to 68,546 megatons of TNT or nearly 7 times as much energy as all the nuclear weapons on earth put together).
Fun Facts:
- The “little boy” nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was 0.013 megaton nuclear blast (meaning that in the event of a crash, at average speed and load, and assuming the earth was dense enough to absorb the impact, Santa would release 5.27 million times as much energy into the surface of the earth than the amount that leveled Hiroshima).
- Santa is a sorcerer! (or something similar with magical powers) This becomes apparent when observing all of Santa’s feats/abilities (his ability to make countless enslaved elves produce 400 million presents a year, his ability to make 9 reindeer fly, his small red bag of 400 million+ presents that he carries around on his back whose size/volume defy the laws of physics and space, his knowledge of which children are naughty/nice and when they are asleep, his immortality, his ability to be in multiple malls and other places at once, etc.)
- Santa (being that he is a sorcerer) can create force fields. Without a force field or some type of shielding, the amount of force exerted on Santa and his reindeer caused by air resistance (quadratic drag) during flight at his average speed and the amount of heat generated (from ram pressure) would be enough to completely vaporize Santa and his reindeer almost instantly after take-off.
If we assume that Santa would try to make his trip expending the least amount of energy possible, he would minimize the amount of force he and his reindeer needed to exert on his sleigh, thus minimizing the acceleration. For minimum acceleration, they would have to accelerate at a constant rate and would also need to spend the entire 1.022 milli-seconds per house to accelerating. This means that he would need the ability to stop instantaneously, deliver presents instantaneously, etc. for each house. From this, we can conclude that his max speed would be exactly double his average speed (5 million miles per hour) and his acceleration would be 8.857 trillion miles per hour2. (note that if Santa could not stop his sleigh, deliver presents, etc. instantaneously, then his max speed and acceleration would be even greater than our estimates)
Given his acceleration and the weight of his sleigh, we can determine that Santa’s reindeer must apply a constant 2.243 x 1017 pound force to the sleigh (at minimum and not counting air resistance).
If Santa is a sorcerer, it would be fair to assume that his powers are advanced enough to make an aerodynamic force field to generate less drag and heat. Given the shape of his sleigh and configuration of his reindeer, he would probably choose a force field shape similar to a bullet or symmetrical egg to minimize cross-sectional area.
Given the mean diameter and density of the earth, estimating the radius of the cross-sectional area of his force field to be about 1 meter (or roughly 3 feet), and using his average speed, we could determine that if Santa hit the ground and kept pushing, the drag caused by the earth would not only be not enough to stop him from going straight through the planet, but Santa would continue to speed up the entire time he was traveling through. He exerts a force approximately 257 times stronger than the earth exerts back on him. (this number would vary depending on the exact shape of his force field)
Fun Facts:
- As a reference, imagine the amount of force it takes for you to do a 200 lb. bench press. Santa’s reindeer exert a force on the sleigh over 1 quadrillion times stronger (that’s 1 with 15 zeros after it).
- While accelerating at minimum acceleration, Santa experiences 902.89 billion g’s of force (that’s a force equal to 902.89 billion times the force of gravity) for 32 hours straight. About 15 g’s of force would kill the average man in one minute.
- At maximum speed (note again that Santa’s actual maximum speed would be significantly higher than our theoretical value calculated above) and while carrying his average load, if Santa were to crash land into the earth, assuming again he hit a point that was dense enough to take the impact, Santa would have enough kinetic energy to register as a 10 out of 10 on the theoretical Torino Impact Scale. This scale is used to rate how dangerous an asteroid is when colliding with the earth. A 10 of 10 on the scale denotes a global catastrophe. Upon impact, so much dust from the earth and smoke/soot from resulting fires would get caught in the stratosphere (for months or even years) that it could very well result in a nuclear winter. As a result, most rays from the sun would be blocked from our view by the “dirty” stratosphere. Global temperatures would drop, we would notice significant changes in weather patterns, and the first to meet their demise would be many of the plants that rely on the sun for photosynthesis. Afterward, animals that rely on these plants for nutrition (herbivores) would begin to die out. Finally, animals that use these herbivores for sustenance (carnivores) would begin to perish as well. A significant percentage of all life on the planet could be lost by one crash of Santa’s sleigh carrying only half its load.
Although we can’t calculate the amount of heat given off during flight due to many unknown factors (we don’t know the properties of the force field, we’ve never seen an object travel in our atmosphere nearly that fast, etc.), we can give some points of reference. When traveling at hypersonic speeds, the faster the object, the hotter it gets. The fastest object ever recorded to travel through air on earth was the Stardust capsule traveling at nearly 29,000 mph and reached temperatures estimated to be nearly 5,600° degrees Fahrenheit. Santa travels over 170 times faster than the shuttle did. As a reference, the surface of the sun is approximately 9,900° Fahrenheit.
So from all of this, we can conclude that one of the following must be true. Which one is true is up to you to decide….
Santa has magic powers and can defy many laws of physics.
Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
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I found that interesting and pretty funny. Peace!
Tyler
