There are a number of frivolous messages appearing on Technet at the moment. Could the more serious minded especially those Technettersin aerospace, NASA etc, please consider and comment on the following which I found recently. It may have significant ramifications. (Do not show this to tiny children and maybe some grown ups) FATHER CHRISTMAS: Is there a Santa? Notes from a lecture by Prof. Barr Von Humbug DFC - (Anti Xmas) 25th December 1996 Although scientific evidence (assessed below) now looks comprehensively against the existence of Santa Claus, the story will not die. As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests and with research help from that renown scientific journal "SPY", we can now discuss the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus. 1. No known species of reindeer can fly, but there are are 300,000 speciesof 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 Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average 3.5 children per household, thats 91.8 million homes; one assumes there is 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 seems logical). This works out at 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with children Santa has 1/1000th of second to park, 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 onto the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which of course they are not), we are talking about 0.78 miles per household, a trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us do once ever 31 hours, plus feeding the reindeer etc.. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For the purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, Ulysses space probe, moves at a paltry 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer runs at 15 miles per hour tops. 4.The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized lego set (2 lbs), the sleigh is carrying 321,800 tons not counting Santa, who invariably is described as overweight. On land conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300lbs. Even granting that flying reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, he cannot do the job with eight or nine. He would need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload, not even counting the weight of the sleigh 353,430 tons. Again for comparison, this is 4 times the weight of the QE2. 5. 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a space craft reentering the earths atmosphere; the lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second. Each in short, will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team with be vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa meanwhile, will be subject to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 pound Santa (maybe to light) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force. *************************************************************************** * TechNet mail list is provided as a service by IPC using SmartList v3.05 * *************************************************************************** * To unsubscribe from this list at any time, send a message to: * * [log in to unmask] with <subject: unsubscribe> and no text. * *************************************************************************** * If you are having a problem with the IPC TechNet forum please contact * * Dmitriy Sklyar at 847-509-9700 ext. 311 or email at [log in to unmask] * ***************************************************************************