Friday, December 24, 2010

Christmas Science 19: Science of Santa Claus

In the run up to Christmas, Communicate Science offers you 20 Christmas Science Facts. We'll post one every day until the 25th December. The following has been posted in many other places before, but its worth reading again...

Science of Santa Claus

How do Santa's reindeer fly?

How does Santa reach everyone?

This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest manmade 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.

Einstein and Santa Claus?
Physicist Gaute Einevoll has proposed a novel theory:
"We are talking about moving matter, and no one had more knowledge about matter than Albert Einstein. Do I need to point out that the dishevelled physicist reminds many of Santa Claus? Einstein published his special theory of relativity in 1905 and his general theory of relativity in 1916, but after Coca-Cola more or less defined Santa’s ‘look’ in 1930, Einstein didn’t publish that much more. I have wondered if that’s because Einstein became Santa," speculates Einevoll.

He believes that the reason that Einstein never was able to link together quantum theory and relativity is due to the fact that the famous tussled head was busy in secret helping Santa to become a kind of “Quanta Claus”.


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