We can travel faster then light

Discussion of theories involving time as a dimension, time travel, relativity, branes, and so on, usually applying to the "real" universe which we live in.

Postby houserichichi » Wed Jan 04, 2006 12:29 pm

Nothing original here...just following up on wendy's post...please don't smite me.

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, & Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with. This is due to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits/second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has .001 second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles/household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles; not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding & etc. So Santa's sleigh must be moving at 650 miles/second, 3,000 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/second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles/hour.

4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 lb.), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 lb. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see #1) could pull 10 TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with 8, or even 9 reindeer. We need 214,200. This increases the payload - not counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. This is four times the weight of the ocean-liner Queen Elizabeth.

5) 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles/second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat up the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within .00426 of a second. Meanwhile, Santa will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-lb Santa (seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 lb. of force.

If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.
houserichichi
Tetronian
 
Posts: 590
Joined: Wed May 12, 2004 1:03 am
Location: Canada

Postby wendy » Thu Jan 05, 2006 9:18 am

According to all reasonable calculations, Santa lives at North Arm, just up the road from Yandina. Don't know how North Arm became North Pole.

Most of the Northern Hemisphere can be largely ignored, because they have their christmas in winter :o (how uncivilised: can't have christmas in the summer holidays :S).

W
The dream you dream alone is only a dream
the dream we dream together is reality.

\ ( \(\LaTeX\ \) \ ) [no spaces] at https://greasyfork.org/en/users/188714-wendy-krieger
User avatar
wendy
Pentonian
 
Posts: 2014
Joined: Tue Jan 18, 2005 12:42 pm
Location: Brisbane, Australia

Postby Keiji » Thu Jan 05, 2006 5:26 pm

wendy wrote:(how uncivilised: can't have christmas in the summer holidays :S).


How's that uncivilized? Does it really matter what time of year the summer is? :P
User avatar
Keiji
Administrator
 
Posts: 1984
Joined: Mon Nov 10, 2003 6:33 pm
Location: Torquay, England

Postby wendy » Fri Jan 06, 2006 7:52 am

reply to houserichi:

1. The reindeer do not fly. Regardless of the animal that is selected to pull the sleigh, the sleigh does not hang pendant behind the animals. That is, both the sleigh and the animals are held by an invisible road.

Note also that the Rolf-Harris song 'six white boomers' suggests that the same sleigh would still travel as long as there are land-animals in harness: the song refers to six kangaroos.

Note also that harnessed birds are also known in legend: here the sleigh does hang considerably below the birds.

2. One notes that "belief in santa" and christianity do not go hand in hand. The santa story is at home in japan, for example, even though there is no major christianity.

The whole point is that Santa does not visit everyone as once: that is, there is no common santa that visits every house in the world, and that Santa might at a night, visit only 15 house-holds.

3. Santa is depicted as being at home before the sun rises, and sipping on his drink by 9 a.m. The evidence then is he is not affected by time zones, and pretty much does not cross these.

4. The size of the sleigh is pretty well depicted. It holds about 1/2 ton, specifically, five bags of three bushels each. The present-drop is typically a bushel per household.

5. The mechanical advantage of air-travel is about 12. Sleighs that on the ground travel at 15 miles per hour, would then travel at something like 180 miles per hour, not inconsistant with the pictures of the sleigh.

The whole run would commence at 10 pm, christmas night, the journey being for something like an hour or two, before ariving at the city. Fifteen bushels would be deposited at fifteen house-holds, a process taking four hours, before the return at 4 am. Santa would arive at home sometime just after dawn.

Selecting a one-hour trip would allow one to use North Arm, rather than North Pole, as the site of santa's workshop.

Much of the sydney thing is largely centred on the same fantasies that lead Lord Kelvin to say with a straight face, that man would sufficate if he travelled at more than 30 mph, even though ski-ers have been doing this for some time.

W
The dream you dream alone is only a dream
the dream we dream together is reality.

\ ( \(\LaTeX\ \) \ ) [no spaces] at https://greasyfork.org/en/users/188714-wendy-krieger
User avatar
wendy
Pentonian
 
Posts: 2014
Joined: Tue Jan 18, 2005 12:42 pm
Location: Brisbane, Australia

Postby faranya » Wed Jan 25, 2006 12:11 am

Wow, that was a horrible article! Could you imagine the effects of a child reading that? And this is all just against Santa's trip...what about the presents themselves? A team of elves supposedly makes these toys over the course of a year, and then would package them into name-brand boxes. How long would these elves have to work? Everyday of the year (except maybe Xmas Eve) and Santa gets all the credit? :shock:
faranya
Dionian
 
Posts: 17
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2005 9:58 pm

Previous

Return to Non-Spatial Dimensions

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 9 guests