Christmas discussion: Check out three theories about Santa's existence

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if Santa really had to deliver all the presents - to all the little kids around the world! - Christmas Eve riding his sleigh equipped with flying reindeer? We have already posted a story about this issue here in Mega Curioso, and you can access it through this link.

It seems that the discussion about Good Old Man's abilities is usually on the agenda every Christmas, because according to Jesus Diaz of the Gizmodo website, this issue has generated an interesting and entertaining debate, resulting in the advice of an astrophysicist, a programmer and from a person who loves Christmas. Check out the interesting theories presented by the following trio:

1 - The opinion of astrophysics

According to Linda Harden - the astrophysicist - we must first deal with the issue of flying reindeer and the real amount of children Santa needs to visit. Thus, although there are no known species of reindeer on the planet capable of flying, as there are still 300, 000 species of organisms that have not yet been classified, so we cannot completely rule out the possibility that they exist. Now, let's calculate the visits.

Although there are about 2 billion children in the world, Santa doesn't usually visit Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and Buddhists, which means that Good Old Man's work drops considerably, and he only needs to give about 378 million pimpolts. . Moreover, based on the censuses, considering that there are 3.5 children per household - where at least one behaved properly - this results in 91.8 million homes to be cared for.

Recalling that Noel has 31 hours to complete deliveries - thanks to the different spindles, the rotation of the earth and considering that he is moving east-west - then he needs to make 822.6 visits per second, which involve parking the sleigh, go down the chimney, distribute the gifts etc. To facilitate the calculation, Linda considered that 91.8 million homes are evenly distributed across the planet.

That means Santa has to make a stop every 1.3 kilometers or so, and since he has to visit 91.8 million homes in 31 hours, he has to travel at speeds of over 1, 000 kilometers per second. And still has the sleigh load! Assuming that each child gets a LEGO kit of about 1 kilo, imagine the weight! That's what Linda didn't even count on the weight of the chubby old man.

To pull all this would require thousands of reindeer, which would further increase the weight of the structure that, traveling at over a thousand kilometers per second, would create absurd resistance with the air. The reindeer at the front of the sleigh would burn and the entire team would be vaporized, while Santa would remain glued to the bottom of the vehicle due to centrifugal force that, according to Linda, would be tens of thousands of times greater than gravity.

2 - The programmer's opinion

Jim Mantle, the programmer, asks us not to be so disbelieving and criticizes several considerations in Linda's opinion, such as the uniform distribution of homes and the number of children per household. According to Jim, we cannot overlook the fact that many couples have no children, and that there are many poor families in the world, aspects that further reduce Santa's work - making the number of visitors drop significantly.

Jim also disagrees with the idea that each household has at least one well behaved child. After all, what if each house has more than one good child? And what about the ones that only have devils? Thus the number of visits would be even smaller. Also, Santa can't fly over multiple locations - such as air bases, countries at war, and controlled areas - so he'd have to use a parcel service to dispatch some of the presents.

The programmer also points out that, according to the theory of relativity, when an object reaches the speed of light, something magical happens over time, which behaves differently and slows down. Thus, considering that Santa Claus travels faster than the speed of light, then he would have enough time to visit all the children - who are not evenly distributed around the world.

To do so - without having to use a spacecraft capable of reaching space warp speed - Jim relied on the astrophysical scenario that the reindeer would be vaporized. According to him, instead, the animals would absorb all this energy produced and use it to accelerate. What's more, according to Jim, antlers would function as ultra-powerful solar panels designed to power reindeer. A complete nerd trip!

3 - The opinion of the Christmas fan

To wrap up the discussion, the Christmas fan - whose name or lineup has not been released, but let's call him Natalino - blasts the two previous opinions. To begin with, Natalino points out that the excellent documentary “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” (see cover above) reveals that reindeers are able to fly thanks to the consumption of magic acorns, and this fact is clearly confirmed in the movie “Rudolph, the Red Nose Reindeer ”.

Regarding the fight over the number of visitors, Natalino explains that both Linda and Jim ignored the issue of separating the Church into Roman and Orthodox. This was before the Julian calendar was replaced by the Gregorian calendar, and as the Orthodox still base their liturgical celebrations on the old calendar, their Christmas is celebrated days after the traditional date. So Santa has two dates to deliver the presents.

For Natalino, there are several misstatements about the number of children per household and how many would receive gifts for good behavior. This is because, he explained, it was not taken into account that, depending on the religion - such as the Catholic, for example - families are likely to have more children than they consider, not to mention that only children tend to be more spoiled and consequently more taken away.

Lastly, about delivering the presents, Natalino argues that Santa and Mrs. Claus have been together for quite a while - at least 100 years. And no couple living in a place where the sun doesn't appear for six months of the year wouldn't be long without children, would they? Thus, there must be at least five generations of the Noel family - with many children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren ... - which together make up an entire population of helpers.

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And you, dear reader, what did you think of the above opinions? Which one was your favorite? Do you have any crazy theories about Santa's existence and how he would visit the little children on the planet? Get in the mood for Christmas and unleash your imagination in the comments below!

* Posted on 12/24/2016