The Plausibility of Santa
by
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/colmane.htm

Highfield makes clear the magnificence of Santa's daunting challenge. Begin with the number of stops Santa has to make: probably about 842 million. If you make some assumptions about population density and distances between homes, then run the calculations, you find that Santa has to cover 221 million miles in one night.

If Santa makes his best use of time by traveling opposite Earth's rotation, he'd have to move at 2,558 miles per second just to have a fraction of a second to actually drop off gifts. The acceleration he'd have to achieve between rooftops would generate about 2 billion G's of force on his sleigh. That's more than enough, says one physicist in the book, to reduce a person to "chunky salsa." 

In that case, how could a real Santa do what he does? "Santa clearly is ahead of the curve when it comes to applying advanced scientific theories to his sleigh's design," says Larry Silverberg, aerospace engineer at North Carolina State, as quoted by Highfield. "There is a way, and it's based on plausible science." 

Santa has obviously figured out how to put himself, his sleigh and his reindeer inside a "relativity cloud," according to Highfield's book.

The theory of relativity states that matter can't move through space faster than the speed of light. But there's no limit on how fast space can move. So Santa puts his sleigh inside a bubble of space and moves the space. 

That happens by using some device to warp space-time so it expands behind the sleigh and contracts in front of it. Basically, Santa, the reindeer and all the presents get propelled along through the cosmos like a surfer riding a mongo wave. 

Such a means of transportation solves a boatload of problems for Santa. First, he can move plenty fast enough -- at or greater than the speed of light - to get to all the houses. 

Second, if he travels that fast, another part of relativity predicts that time for Santa would slow. From his perspective, time would slow to the point that the world outside his bubble would be just about frozen. He could take all the time he wants to zoom through his rounds. To us on Earth, it would seem that he had done it in the snap of a finger. That would explain why he can travel the world yet never be seen. 

Because Santa would be stationary inside a moving space bubble, he would not feel as if he were moving himself. It would be as if he'd put his sleigh in a railroad box car. So he would not experience the acceleration or the G forces. He would not be turned into salsa. He wouldn't create a series of sonic booms, which would make it hard to sneak onto a rooftop. 

Dasher and the other reindeer would not burn into charcoal by traveling at high speeds through the atmosphere. It's the perfect solution. 

So no more falling back on the lame explanation that Santa isn't real.