Scientists have found out what properties a famous New Year's character should have in order to fulfill his mission of distributing gifts to children.
Do you believe in the existence of Santa Claus? Take your time to answer. Otherwise, you will find yourself in the position of a small child who, on the basis of other people's stories, believes in the existence of a fairy-tale hero, although he has never seen him. Adults do not believe in Santa Claus because they have never seen him either. But if you believe only your eyes, then the Earth seems flat. And what does science say about Santa Claus? And here the most amazing thing begins. Because from the point of view of science, the existence of Santa Claus or Santa Claus does not contradict the laws of nature. True, in order to become real, Santa Claus needs to solve several scientific and technical problems, over which the best minds of mankind are still struggling unsuccessfully. The phenomenon of Santa Claus as a physical phenomenon was analyzed by astrophysicist Ethan Segal.
1. Speed
Santa Claus's work schedule is enviable - a day in 364. But on this day (or rather, at 42 o'clock between sunset in the Russian Far East and sunrise in Alaska) he has to do a truly titanic job. The planet is home to 7.4 billion people. But, given that in a number of countries Santa is not expected (for example, China celebrates the New Year according to its calendar), he will have to visit 500 million families. The homes where Santa's clients live are spread over 65 million square kilometers. It turns out that the average distance between two neighboring houses is 0.33 kilometers on average. Therefore, to deliver gifts to all boys and girls, the elderly gentleman will need to spend 0.0003 seconds per visit. It's not an easy task if you only have a sleigh pulled by eight deer as a vehicle.
If we imagine that Santa spends half of his time on the road (and he still has to quietly enter the house, lay out gifts and, according to the Catholic tradition, eat the treats that have been prepared for him), then grandfather should move at an average speed of 2200 km / s … This is only less than 1% of the speed of light, but human-made technology lags behind these values by orders of magnitude. For comparison, a space rocket, when it enters orbit, moves with a "turtle" speed of 8 km / s.
2. Temperature
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We know that small meteorites, composed of stone and metal, burn up when they enter the dense atmosphere. It is scary to think what will become of a creature of flesh and blood if it develops the necessary speed. Grandpa will simply evaporate! Spacecraft are covered with a heat-insulating layer for safety purposes. In the case of Santa, Ethan Segal offers two solutions. It is necessary to install a powerful heat shield in front of the reindeer team, which could absorb the generated heat equal to several trillion joules per second (it occurs as a result of collision with the atmosphere). This is several orders of magnitude more than the energy generated by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima - 6x10 to the 13th power of Joules. The second option is to pump out air in front of the sled using some kind of vacuum pump. But scientists, even in theory, have not come close to creating such devices.
3. Overload
If the first two problems can be solved, then the problem of Santa's realism rests on the physical capabilities of a person. To achieve the required speed in such a short time, the distributor of New Year's gifts must withstand an acceleration of 1.5 billion g. By comparison, the record held by US Air Force Officer Eli Biding is 82.6 g for 0.04 seconds. During the tests, he lost consciousness and regained consciousness only after 10 minutes. I must say that Biding was still lucky. His colleague John Stapp, who withstood 46.2 for 1.1 seconds, lost dental fillings, suffered several fractures and, as a result of blood vessel hemorrhage, lost his sight for some time. It is unlikely that a middle-aged and untrained Santa can work all night even in such relatively "comfortable" conditions.
In theory, there is a way out. To do this, the grandfather needs to be placed in a sealed suit and a turbine pump installed in his body, which could maintain blood circulation in the body, since the human heart cannot cope with such a task. Santa Claus will have to become a cyborg, but what can you do to make children all over the world happy.
YAROSLAV KOROBATOV