John Malkovich’s voice and spectacular cadence in your head:
- “It is estimated that Santa’s sleigh weighs 353 thousand tons. So, traveling at 650 miles per second would create such enormous friction that Santa and his reindeer would burst into flames. You understand? Like a meteor entering the atmosphere. This is a scientific fact.”
I know this is supposed to be a shitpost, but what does weight/mass have to do with friction tho?? Also no even thaaat fast, so probably no flames but enough friction to tear their skin off.
The friction (and resulting heat) I am assuming would come from wind resistance. Think along similar lines to this classic XKCD article.
650 miles per second, as Malkovich said in the skit, translates to about 2.3 million miles per hour, or about 3.8 million kilometers per hour for the more mathematically reasonable among us out there.
A much lighter meteor traveling much slower than that through the atmosphere is enough to generate the heat needed for combustion, so it would probably apply to Santa in this hypothetical scenario, too.
650 miles per second looks like i failed reading comprehension… just skimmed that part and assumed per hour instead of second lol
650 mi/s is 1040,000m/s which is mach 3032. the heating at that point would be mainly from the superheated plasma, not wind resistance
Air “friction” has no dependence on mass though. An airplane will effectively have the same air resistance fully loaded as compared to if empty. The surface area/geometry doesn’t change. Same would apply to Santa’s sled.
And they’d be starting and stopping all over the place, so the kind of acceleration needed to reach that speed would kill any known organic being via g forces before they’d even suffer from the fire. But he’s one of the fae, so data on them is lacking I guess.
The wind resistance shouldn’t be dependant on the mass. Shape of the sleigh would be the real factor.
But another thing to consider is that the gigantic mass and heat capacity. Given that the sleigh has a good heat distribution, it would take a lot of air resistance to actually make the sleigh combust. I don’t have a decent guess for the average heat capacity, so I don’t actually know if it’s significant enough, but the calculation is more complex than just looking at the speed.
Small nitpick, technically at those speeds the majority of the heat comes from air compressing in front of the object, not the air friction
The heat doesn’t come from friction. It comes from compression of the gas in front of the object.
I’m guessing, this is a Santa that doesn’t magically fly through the air, but actually sleighs on the ground…
I would assume to move such a mass at such a speed would mean an enormous force, which together with air not wanting to move would create such a friction
Also meteors don’t burn up due to friction. They burn up due to the heat generated by compressing the atmosphere stuck in front of them.
It’s a mistranslation. The original text said Santa works in eleven dimensions. Time and space mean nothing to that guy. That got turned into Santa working with elves. It’s understandable as the original eldritch texts drive mere mortals readers insane. Multidimensional documentation is the worst.
I thought we agreed that he was in a quantum state, a superposition of all children’s homes, relying on not being observed as it would collapse the quantum state.
Therefore Santa and his reindeer must be fireproof! I understand.
The more you learn about Father Christmas the more you realise he’s an eldritch creature of phenomenal power. The fact that we can appease an Old God capable of destroying us in an instant with a simple offering of Sherry and a Mince Pie is nothing short of a miracle.
The fact that we can appease an Old God capable of destroying us in an instant
Yo bro what are you doing you’re gonna start a holy war
This is why fires in fireplaces pose no threat.
Santa’s sled has ablative shielding.
Santa & his coterie are quantum so it doesn’t matter what you think his velocity is
Unless you don’t know his position
You can’t know his position. If you were to observe Santa then the quantum superposition waveform would collapse and only one house would get presents.
Saw this a couple of days ago and is my new head canon.
All of the gifts are in a bag of holding so their weight wouldn’t be included. It would be about two tons including the reindeer.
If anyone wants to know more about the math, I think this refers to https://www2.nau.edu/lrm22/lessons/scientific_method/santa.html
Santa Claus is obviously an absurd myth, as this post and the nau.edu article correctly point out. The only rational explanation is that the Christmas present phenomenon is Odin delivering Yule gifts. Odin and his horse Sleipnir–well-documented as the best of all horses–would not be restricted by the physical laws and friction. Odin’s generosity has been misattributed to this portly, cola-guzzling elf for too long and it is time to come to terms with FACTS.
https://brodgar.co.uk/2020/12/14/odin-as-santa-claus-and-other-norse-yule-myths/
Nah, definitely based on Amanita Muscaria and the shamans. Way too many corelations. https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/12/02/mushroom-santa/
Santa’s Sleigh uses Warp Drive technology to form a space-time bubble around the sleigh and the reindeer.
My kink is John Malkovich stating detailed facts that crush my dreams.
New kink unlocked
Santa can see you when you sleep, knows when you’re awake, and visits every believer’s house at the same time. He’s not scientific. Santa is an egregorian God, created from nothing by the belief of his believers. Santa Clause is a vast, Eldridge being, set upon the earth to reward the kind and punish the selfish. Santa is everywhere. Santa is everything.
So be good, for goodness sake.
TIL!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore
Egregore (also spelled egregor; from French égrégore, from Ancient Greek ἐγρήγορος, egrēgoros ‘wakeful’) is an esoteric concept representing a non-physical entity that arises from the collective thoughts of a distinct group of people.
FUCK YOUR SCIENCE, ITS MAGIC
Any sufficiently advanced science would appear like magic. ;)
I hear him talking in a bad dialect of a russian crime boss talking about poker, sorry, every time I see him I have to think about this debacle.
Funny, but most heat of reentry is caused by generated plasma as opposed to air resistance (though that is also a component). There is an excellent Scott Manley video about this topic
