How fast must Santa travel on Christmas Eve?

[Bill]

According to these estimates (with certain assumptions) he has 34 microseconds per stop, and the reindeer must travel at 3,604 miles (5,800 kilometers) per second.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071203...t_071203163428

Thanks.

Bill

Originally Posted by Bill

According to these estimates (with certain assumptions) he has 34 microseconds per stop, and the reindeer must travel at 3,604 miles (5,800 kilometers) per second.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071203...t_071203163428

Thanks.

Bill

That story was a useless exercise.

Pogue

[Fowlplay]

This made me smile. I particularly like the part about the wind resistence at the end.

[Ieuan ab Arthur]

Hi All:

If you're looking for the low-down on Santa's flight, I know a website by some guy with a funny name; Snaps, Snipes, Snips, or something like that.

This Snoops fellow seems to have all the dirt.

Ta ra 'wan,

Ieuan "Full metal reindeer" ab Arthur

[damian]

If Santa really does the things for which he is credited, perhaps he has a superpower akin to Hiro Nakamura. That would account for everything.

Disprove that theory, ya Grinch.

No, he just uses large scale QM to be at more than one house at the same time. Cuts down on the wind resistance too.

[Singing in the Drizzle]

This is all assuming Santa is using present day technology. Now if Santa is a organization from the future with the ability to time travel and have access to teleporters this could easily be done and lots of problems are solved. For example the going down the chimney thing and the speed required. Santa would only need to work 12 hours a night using the time machine to come back to the same night every working day of his actual time back home. He would only need to travel at 40 MPH then with a quick stop to teleport the gifts down around the tree. If he sped thing to about 90MPH, he only need to work 8 hours a day and can take weekends off.

[Pseudo_Croat]

Of course, there's an alternative explanation for Santa getting everything done in such a short time: On December 24, he simply realizes all his quantum states at once. That's why kids aren't suppoeed to go look for him, since doing that would collapse his waveform.

- Pseudo (yes, I'm a geek) Croat

[Meka]

Originally Posted by Ieuan ab Arthur

Hi All:

If you're looking for the low-down on Santa's flight, I know a website by some guy with a funny name; Snaps, Snipes, Snips, or something like that.

This Snoops fellow seems to have all the dirt.

Ta ra 'wan,

Ieuan "Full metal reindeer" ab Arthur

I highly recommend the rebuttal article linked to by Snopes.

No physics-defying sleigh. No immolated reindeer. Just lots and lots of Claus inbreeding.

[snopes]

Do you know how much weight the average greedy Brit piles on over Christmas?

Or how many turkeys end up on our tables over the festive period?

Ponder ye not – for as an early present to the nation we have the answers to these and all the other most-asked questions that get Brits winter wondering every Yuletide.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...icle616196.ece

[FloridaGirl]

http://www.noradsanta.org/

[Pseudo_Croat]

Originally Posted by FloridaGirl

http://www.noradsanta.org/

I love that site! Not only is NORAD tracking Santa through videos this year, they're using Google Earth as well. They just spotted him traveling over Peru.

- Pseudo (Santa flew over Croatia at about 4:30 PM IIRC) Croat

[Silas Sparkhammer]

Originally Posted by Pseudo_Croat

Of course, there's an alternative explanation for Santa getting everything done in such a short time: On December 24, he simply realizes all his quantum states at once. That's why kids aren't suppoeed to go look for him, since doing that would collapse his waveform.

- Pseudo (yes, I'm a geek) Croat

There's a lovely variant of this: Santa allows his momentum to be measured to an absurdly high degree of accuracy, thus increasing his positional uncertainty to a wave-form that covers the entire surface of the earth. So, for one micro-instant, at midnight, he's everywhere at once. It doesn't really matter how fast he's moving; it could be near the speed of light or at no speed at all. What matters is that we measure that speed to several hundred decimal places of accuracy.

Silas