The Physics of Santa 172
Roland Piquepaille writes "If you don't believe that Santa Claus can deliver presents to millions of homes in a single night, Larry Silverberg, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University (NCSU), explains that Santa's society of elves has an understanding of physics and engineering that exceeds our own. In fact, Santa Claus and his crew really can deliver presents in one night because of their advanced knowledge of electromagnetic waves, the space/time continuum, nanotechnology, genetic engineering and computer science. For example, he doesn't carry presents. He uses a nano-toymaker to fabricate toys grown atom by atom inside the children's homes. Very entertaining reading... Here is a link to additional details and pictures of Santa and his elves flying over New Zealand."
And if you believe that.... (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:And if you believe that.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, each year millions of kids get presents from Santa. It would take a massive conspiracy on a global scale to pull off that kind of evidence from fraud. One or two houses... maybe... but millions?
Now, compare that with the actual reliable evidence for God: there isn't any. You can explain the entire God thing with a bunch of bored people in a desert with nothing else to do. To explain the little bits of non-evidence religion provides is downright trivial. But, millions upon millions of presents each and ever year? Those presents actually exist and everything.
On pretty much every count Santa wins. Where does Santa live? The north pole. Where does God live? Outside of spacetime, where he's exempt from the laws of cause-and-effect in order to be a cause for the universe while not needing a cause for himself. I mean, a simple answer vs. something clearly constructed out of bullcrap... it's your choice.
As for the whole, watching you all the time and knowing when you're being bad or good old men... I think Santa is much more plausible.
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Who is, of course, the devil. Having been beaten by Santa, Satan must take the form of a black woman.
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Hardly. Western Civilization as we know it was shaped by the Enlightenment which was largely a rejection of religious dogma in favor of reason. The theocratic horrors of the world shaped by the bible didn't end, but they were curtailed.
By understanding it, you'll have a deeper understanding of most poems and literature.
Well, "a lot", certainly. Most? Not so much.
The book also provides evidence of God.
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And also plenty of direct evidence that the Jesus story and Christian beliefs were fictional rip offs of the back story of a competing religion [wikipedia.org].
Actual genuine belief in the factual accuracy of the story of Jesus, let alone belief in Christian spirituality requires either ignorance and stupidity or outright denial and rejection of known facts.
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http://jdstone.org/cr/files/mithraschristianity.ht ml [jdstone.org]
http://www.venusproject.com/ecs/true_origins_chris tianity.html [venusproject.com]
http://tektonics.org/copycat/mithra.html [tektonics.org]
Mithraism dates back 4000 years, obviously predating Christianity. Here's a few little details that Christianity borrowed from Mithraism:
1. Mithra was born of a virgin on December 25th in a cave, and his birth was attended by shepherds.
2. He was considered a great traveling teacher and master.
3. He had 12 companions or disci
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I'm well aware of that.
None of which have anything to do with the bible. That's just politics/greed/brutality as usual. Sure, the Church was behind a lot of it, but that was all covered by part of my post which you even quoted, but apparently failed to read:
"The theocratic horrors of the world shaped by the bible didn't end, but they wer
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Dude. I've read the Bible, the Koran too. For my money, the Koran is better written though still boring as dirt.
>>It is the book that has shaped Western Civilization as we know it.
So has racism, war, and disease.
>>The book also provides evidence of God.
Books aren't evidence. I've seen plenty of suggested non-evidence before. Look women found the tomb... it must be true (though, each Gospel changes the wom
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I didn't realize there were so many Santa believers in here.
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While the legends just grew from evolving story telling, the person did exist.
As for "Messiah" that you speak of, the same is true.
Most people grow out of believing in the magic legend of "Santa".
Sadly, a majority of people, believe that "Messiah" did things more magic than flying with a bright nosed caribou.
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Don't tell me, I know this...
John? Paul? George? Ringo?
Feh, I can't rememeber...
If this is possible (Score:1)
Then why am I not floating in a huge B-Field right now?
I feel the karma roasting ...right....now....
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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from bullshit."
I noticed the article doesn't explain how Santa can simultaneously appear at 30,000 shopping malls!
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A slightly more believable lie is that each of the shopping center representatives of the organization founded by Nicholas of Myra [wikipedia.org] has his own sleigh, set of reindeer, and delivery route.
Wiki wiki wiki wiki, shut up. (Score:5, Informative)
But there was [wikipedia.org].
Is this close enough [wikipedia.org]? Even the giant unicorn [wikipedia.org] is only as dead as the dodo.
There are mermaids [bbc.co.uk], but society doesn't know how to accommodate them, so the tail is split into two legs.
Commode? Oh. [wikipedia.org]
O RLY? [wikipedia.org]
Has there ever been an astronaut from one country lift off in another country's spacecraft? If so, that's a space alien [wikipedia.org].
As Newcleus [wikipedia.org] put it, "Wiki wiki wiki wiki, shut up."
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And I thought I was bitter...
Death to Susan... from Hogfather...
Nephilium
"I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it." -- The Big Sleep (Chapter 1)
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Oh boy, I hate to be the one... but when mommy and daddy told you that the human mind is just a patterning of electromagnetic fields and chemical connections... they were lying. Chemical connections and electromagnetic fields becoming self-aware holds up about as well as the Physics of Santa.
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Oh, right, sorry - baseless dogma it is, then.
Because everyone knows posting sarcastic, unsupported but emphatic statements of your own personal belief as if they were fact is the way to convince anyone with half a brain, right?
And FWIW, my personal belief is that "self-awareness" is just recursion - a kind of natural feedback loop that may be exhibited as emergent behaviour in certain complex system. If you're positing something metaphysical or supernatural about it, you'
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That's it! I'm reporting you to Mister Clause so that you can have a visit from his trusted sidekick. [wikipedia.org] You can expect to be taking your holiday dinner tomorrow standing up. :D
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it was first a babylonian myth, then got ripped off. Ut-Napishtim was renamed Noah. everything about Jesus is a rip-off of older myths too. makes it funny when people call the bible the greatest story ever told. in reality, at the time it was the most cliche story ever.
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Santa DID show up my house last year - see video (Score:5, Informative)
Todd Neff from the Boulder Camera wrote a Christmas Eve article about the physics of Santa. [dailycamera.com] He included a "Parental disretion advised" notice, but the headline writer argueably got a little carried away. Needless to say, since I live in the Republic of Boulder, [blogspot.com] outraged residents wrote several letters to the editor [dailycamera.com] that were published on December 28th. So I wrote the following which ran on December 31st. [dailycamera.com] Great headline by the Camera and they printed my letter in its entirety (including some subtle attempts at humor) with minor grammatical edits.
HO, HO, HO - Yes, Virginia, as my Web cam shows
As a technologist, I enjoyed Todd Neff's piece on Christmas Eve about the physics of Santa; kudos to the Daily Camera for not just reprinting the AP article, but doing some local embelishment that added a nice touch to the story (and ditto in the Dec. 28 piece about the coming leap-second).
As reported by the Camera's Kate Larsen a week earlier (Dec. 17), I have three Web cams (three more than last year) at my house watching my 26,000 Christmas lights. Needless to say, my 7-year-old and 4-year-old sons were excited to see if Santa would show up on these Web cams. And, not surprisingly, the Big Red Guy (and especially Rudolph) are quite visible stopping by our Lafayette house on Christmas Eve. [komar.org]
So while it would be (way!) out of place for me to weigh in on journalistic reporting as other letter writers have, I thought I would write to say that while Todd accurately reported that the physics of Santa are a challenge, the conclusion is wrong. Yes, sometimes, the paper doesn't get the story right ... and yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
Santa does deliver presents on Christmas Eve to children around the world.
The magic/miracle is still alive, and I would suggest that Camera readers (and their kids) review the video at www.komar.org to judge for themselves.
And you'd better believe I'll be watching next year as Santa returns at Christmas.
Colz Grigor: Santa is Magic (Score:2)
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Dr. Who (Score:2, Insightful)
Not Science... Law! (Score:2)
Any decent artist out there want to make up a cartoon depicting the RIAA suing Santa in a courtroom?
Roland (Score:5, Funny)
Santa Claus: An Engineer's Perspective I. There are approximately 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Buddist religions, this reduces the workload on 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 that there is at least one good child in each.
II. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and rotation of the earth, assuming he travels 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 at least one good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, jump out, go down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump in the sleigh, and move on to the next house. (That's why it's really pointless to stay up and wait for him....)
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 breaks. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For the purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 75.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
III. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child has nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull nothing more than 300 pounds. Even granted that "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or nine of them; Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the sleigh itself, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizibeth (the ship, not the monarch).
IV. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance; this would heat up the reindeer in the same fasion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and causing deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.2 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reaches the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 G's. A 250 pound Santa (which seem ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pound of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
V. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
Don't forget to click my link and read some of the responses to the original post, they're great. Merry Christmas Slashdot!
Re:Roland (Score:5, Informative)
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As I previosly poited out to someone else when they posted something along the same argument i their journal:
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Nonsense - a "lumpy" distribution is FAR superior to an even distribution, especially when you have multiple Santa clones to work with. Which would involve more travelling - 100 kids in 33 apartments in one building, or your "even distribution"? The answer is so obvious that I'm amazed the original author made such a blooper.
Even with 1 Santa, an even distribution is the worst possible one. Mind you, they also "proved" bumble-bees can't fly. And the Titanic can never sink.
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That's interesting and all, but get to the meat of the issue: Which one brings the best presents
Just let it go (Score:1)
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National Security (Score:1)
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check out here http://www.noradsanta.org/en/default.php [noradsanta.org] for the scoop!!!
I noticed this year he cleverly missed the middle east... maybe he's afraid of getting shot down this year.... or maybe UN sanctions apply to Santa too!!
Please... (Score:2)
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The Real Story (Score:2)
(Don't bother hitting the link, here's the text from the page - the author who collected and organized the posts is Richard Harter, and everything from here on down is his effort, with some minor edits to make it past the filter on Slashdot):
Santa Claus: Lord of the Rings
In the rec.arts.sf.written newsgroup there was a disturbingly plausible thread connecting Santa Claus and the Lord of the Rings. Learn about fruitcake as mathoms, the sinister Tom Bombadil,
Roland! (Score:5, Funny)
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Zombie tradition (Score:1, Interesting)
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The problem is the other parents. Try raising a child not to believe in Santa and you will be quickly ostracized by other parents. Plus, you don't think any of those parents are going to let your kid play with theirs when the holidays roll around, do you?
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
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> Plus, you don't think any of those parents are going to let your kid play with theirs when the holidays roll around, do you?
s/Santa/Jesus/g
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I think I stopped with the santa stuff myself when I was old enough to read (about 5 or 6) since it was obvious that if santa came he didn't actually leave any presents... they were already there under the tree and they were from my parents, not a guy in a red suit.
And that is the answer... (Score:2)
Re:Zombie tradition (Score:4, Interesting)
Our son is almost 2.5 years old, and he can already identify Santa Claus as being the fat guy with the beard in the red suit. We haven't told him what Santa Claus (purportedly) is or does; he's simply got a label for the "fat bearded guy in red suit" image now.
We'll answer any questions he asks, truthfully; at most, we're likely to tell him that Santa Claus is someone who travels around each Christmas leaving presents for children, in order to celebrate the Winter Solstice. We're going to leave out the naughty/nice thing (punishments and rewards for bad/good behavior are, it turns out, not a good idea). We're definitely going to leave Jesus out of it (we're atheists), except maybe to explain that that's what certain people believe the winter holiday is about.
My mother-in-law once said that Santa is like a "practice God" for kids to believe in, and I pretty much agree; but I'm not going to pretend he doesn't exist as an entity in our culture, and our son is going to have questions about him.
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Santa Claus the character travels around the world giving gifts on Christmas, and that's what we're going to tell our son when he's old enough to comprehend it (which won't be long). Sorry I didn't make it blindingly clear enough for you to comprehend. :)
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The new "star" over Bethlehem described in the bible also helps us determine when it might have been.
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Well, technically the best guess that can be made from the bible gives something like that as Jesus' birthdate.
Actually, there is no credible evidence that there ever was such a person.
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And then wonder why their kids don't believe a word they say when they're a bit older.
Frankly I've always found the myth of people exchanging gifts out of love and kindness for each other far more asthetically pleasing than some fat guy trying to stuff himself down the chimmney, even if just as mythological.
KFG
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I don't actually recall my parents making a big story out of Santa; I think I learned most of the story from books like "The Night Before Christmas", various television specials, and talking with friends. Like most kids, fantasy blends with reality to a large degree and my world included lots of make believe. I didn't e
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Merry Christmas my fellow Slashdot readers, lets go and spend sometime with some of the people important in our lives and have some fun.
Re:Zombie tradition (Score:4, Insightful)
Have issues with our parents, do we? I haven't heard such vitriol in quite some time. Power? Sadism? Please put down the broad brush you're painting with. It's filled with venom.
It's not a lie - it's a fantasy. It's an opportunity to experience innocence before it is too quickly gone. I didn't lie to my kids - they knew early on that Santa wasn't a real person, but even after they knew, they still played along because it was fun. Fun for them, fun for us. How am I being a dictator doing that?
I hope you can let go of some of your anger before you have your own kids, friend, lest they be immune to the spirit that St. Nick is supposed to represent - giving, sharing and caring for our fellow humans.
Soko
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I agree to a point about the lying. We've never played up Santa or told our kids anything that wasn't true about it. It doesn't seem right to lie, and our kids depend on our credibility for so many things. However I think you're wrong to discount the "magic". Our younger two kids, 5 & 7, believe Santa exists, although our older two never did. And the
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First and foremost, telling your children that Santa Claus is real is not a lie, Santa is quite real, but it isn't the person that's real, it's the CONCEPT. Santa Claus is a personification of kindness and goodwill, of giving to others for all the right reasons. I realized from a rather young age that there was no person named Santa Claus who dropped down the chimney and left presents under the tr
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Such a revolting cliche, I'm sure you didn't invent it yourself. You yourself are mindlessly repeating the same bullshit that was crammed down your throat at some point. Surely the truth is closer to: Christmas is my vacation time and, for our own purposes, we lie to instill a sense of "fear" to get the little bastards to sit still once in a fucking minute.
Or would you rather tell your
Re:Zombie tradition (Score:4, Insightful)
No I'd rather tell a 6 year old that that people care about each other enough to give each other presents.. proving that greed doesn't have to run wild unless you let it.
OTOH you can tell him about a guy in a red suit who gives children exactly what they want on demand, and turn them into greedy consumers before they're 8.
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No, but... (Score:2)
All I know (Score:1)
Well (Score:2)
Not scientific (Score:3, Funny)
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Santa has kept up with the times (Score:2)
Oh come on. Everybody knows that Santa has kept up with the times. The sleigh and reindeer were used at first. At the dawn of the industrial revolution he switched most of his distribution network to rail. Hence the recurring motif of toy trains as a present--they were tchachkis(sp?) that rail executives gave ol Nic when they were competing for his business. He re-gifted a lot of them, the kids turned out to like them, and the idea got traction. The sleigh does, and continues, to make "good will" tour
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Tom Servo explains (Score:2)
Tom: It's quiet in the cold of our own little orbit, starless and bible black. And as I look down on the big blue beam we would call home I think it so near, yet... oh, I wish on that star and I hope that in a little snow-covered house with a warm hearth and a loving family, maybe some kid is looking up tonight and wishing upon us. Oh, and how I hope sweet Santa will fly by tonight, because if he does I'm gonna reach right out and hug that big guy
I have four words for you: (Score:5, Funny)
Logic of Santa (Score:2)
a) Existing Santa exists.
b) Existing Santa does not exist.
Consider b. It is a contradiction, so it is false. Then a) must be true, therefore existing Santa exists, therefore Santa exists. QED.
I Thought Santa Was Dead! (Score:2)
Lobo and the bulldog slaughtered the heavily armed (with pop guns) ELF (Elf Lethal Force) militia, then Lobo called Santa out. Santa, appearing as a burly, cigar-smoking, tattooed biker, whipped out a kukri, whereupon Lobo followed suit, and it was on. Both sides got in a few licks until Lobo chopped off Santa's head.
Afterwards, Lobo took
DMCA? (Score:2)
Are toy manufacturers aware of Santa's gross disregard of their intellectual property?
I smell a massive lawsuit with a settlement in the order of (pinky to mouth) a BRAZILLIAN DOLLARS!
Santa cannot be allowed to continue this flagrant violation of the law. Millions of gainfully employed people in toy factories stand to lose their jobs, due to the selfish actions of this one criminal. Action must be taken, now, so that
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Or maybe become the Pied Piper and use his nanotech to lure away all the "good little boys and girls" to the North Pole and teach them to become nanotech anarchists.
Santa needs to prove his nanotech is for "peaceful purposes only". That's it! Have the UN Security Council pass a resolution imposing sanctions on him and preventing his Christmas sleigh ride until he proves his nanotech does not have a "uranium enrichment"
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And we've just noticed that Santa is dressed all in RED! This means Putin and his KGB thugs are involved!
All toys recieved by children tomorrow should be checked for Polonium-210 contamination!
The Physics of Jesus? (Score:2)
Santa exists or prove he doesnt exist (Score:2, Interesting)
Economics is leading towards a Santa Clause (Score:2)
As we move forward, the world's toys have to be manufactured in fewer and fewer places by fewer and fewer people because it's more efficient to manufacture all the world's products in one place. The world's toys are being transported by fewer vehicles
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Coming up next... (Score:2)
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times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-
made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4
miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per
hour.
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Santa is a selfish bastard really.
Hell, even Bill Gates manages to give to charity... what has Santa ever done?