Santa's Science

Christmas may be a fun time for most of us...But for Santa it's all rather hard work...

On the Christmas cards, it all looked so effortless. Apart from the occasional slip-up with drunken reindeer, narrow chimneys and blizzards, Santa manages to deliver millions of gifts on Christmas Eve, maintaining his smile and benevolence all the while. His support team: a few reindeer and a handful of diligent elves.

Clearly, only an innocent child would swallow this propaganda, a fantasy peddled by generations of Christmas cards to divert attention away from what is undoubtedly the most spectacular research-and-development outfit this planet has ever seen.

I like to think that somewhere under the North Pole there is a handful of scientists experimenting with the latest in high-temperature materials, genetic computing and technologies and warped geometries of time and space, all united by a single purpose: to make millions of children happy each and every Christmas. Put yourself in Santa's fur boots: how does he know where children live, and what gifts they want? How can he fly in any weather, circle the globe overnight, carry millions of pounds of cargo and make silent, rooftop landings with pinpoint accuracy? Some years ago, Spy Magazine examined these issues in an article that has since proliferated across the Internet. The magazine concluded that Santa would require 214,200 reindeer and, with the huge mass of presents would encounter 'enormous air resistance, heating the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.' In short, it continued, 'They will burst into flames almost instantaneously, creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa meanwhile, will be subjected to forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity…In conclusion - if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.'

Nick D Kim - more cartoons here Christmas Spirit

The point is, Santa is not dead. He delivers presents every Christmas Eve, as reliably as Rudolph's nose is red. If he overcomes the kinds of problems outlined above, it can only be with the aid of out-of-this-world technology.

SANTA'S CHALLENGE

Santa has a huge market: there are 2,106 million children aged under eighteen in the world, according to the United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF. Given the pagan origins of the festival and the emphasis on charity, we can assume that Santa will deliver presents to each and every child and not just Christian children or the 191 million who live in industrialised countries. It is Christmas after all.