[no subject]

[borgonoz@...>]

Lo he recibido de otra lista. Y creo que puede ser de interes en aras de
como se trabaja de verdad de modo cientifico en el campo del cientifismo.

Por fin un trbajo serio, metodologicamente correcto, sobre el tema de Santa
Claus. ¿Para cuando un texto sobre los Reyes Magos en que se analice de
forma tan divertida la posibilidad de su existencia?.

Por cierto, me llamo por telefono Francisco Gor, Defensor del Lector de El
Pais, y estuvimos hablando sobre nuestra carta. Tal vez saque algo al
respecto (no sabe) a mediados de enero (en el caso de que lo haga,
transcribire el texto para los companneros que no puedan leerlo). En
cualquier caso ha hablado, parece ser con un par de redactores de la casa y
con los de "Futuro" del diario. Cree tambien que se debe tratar de aumentar
el espiritu critico cuando se publican noticias. Muy interesante la
conversacion, aunque es posible que no veamos cambios en breve.

Feliz Navidad y prospero anno (esto de anno parece otra cosa) nuevo a todos
(y cuando digo todos, digo a todos).

Alfonso Lopez Borgonoz

**************************************************************
IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?
**************************************************************
---------------------------------------------------------------------

As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research
help from that renowned scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990),
I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa
Claus.

1)  No known species of reindeer can fly.  BUT there are 300,000
species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of
these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying
reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2)  There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world.
BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish
and Buddhist cihldren, that reduces the workload to to 15% of the
total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau.  At an
average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8
million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3)  Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the
different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he
travels east to west (which seemes logical).  This works out to 822.6
visits per second.  This is to say that for each Christian household
with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out
of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute
the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been
left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on
to the next house.  Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops
are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to
be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we
are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2
million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at
least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second,
3,000 times the speed of sound.  For purposes of comparison, the
fastest man-made 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.

4)  The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element.
Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego
set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting
Santa, who is invariably described as overweight.  On land,
conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds.  Even
granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES
the normal anount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine.  We
need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting
the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons.  Again, for comparison -
this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5)  353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enourmous
air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion
as spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere.  The lead pair of
reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy.  Per second.
Each.  In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously,
exposing the reindeer behind them, and create 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
centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity.  A 250-pound
Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of
his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve,
he's dead now.