How does Santa do it

Santa Claus TechnologyAn advanced knowledge of electromagnetic waves, the space-time continuum, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and computer science easily explains Santa’s abilities to deliver presents to millions of homes and children in just one night, according to professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, Larry Silverberg, at North Carolina State University.

Silverberg explains that Santa has a personal wireless connection to children’s thoughts — via a listening antenna that combines technologies currently used in cell phones and EKGs — which informs him that Mary in Miami hopes for a surfboard, while Michael from Minneapolis wants a snowboard. Sophisticated signal-processing technology maps out who wants what, where children live, and especially flags red or green children who’ve been bad or good.

Santinformatics software processese all the data and programs the onboard sleigh guidance system (OSG) to calculate the most efficient delivery route. Down on earth this is known as the “traveling salesman problem”, but it’s the TSantaP at the North Pole.

Silverberg is not so silly as to think that Santa and his reindeer can cover approximately 200 million square miles — making stops in some 80 million homes — in one night. Instead, he reckons that Santa uses his knowledge of the space-time continuum to form what Silverberg calls “relativity clouds.” “Based on his advanced knowledge of the theory of relativity, Santa recognizes that time can be stretched like a rubber band, that space can be squeezed like an orange and that light can be bent,’ Silverberg says. ‘Relativity clouds are controllable domains — rips in time — that allow him months to deliver presents while only a few minutes pass on Earth. The presents are truly delivered in a wink of an eye.’

Santa’s reindeer are genetically engineered, of course, allowing them to fly, balance on rooftops and see in the dark. And, just in case you’ve forgotten, here are their names: Donner, Blitzen, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Rudolph, and Olive! Olive, you say? Yes, as in: “Olive the other reindeer, used to laugh and call him names…” These latter two were recruited to the team many years after the original poem naming the reindeer – A Visit from St Nicholas.

Finally, many people wonder how Santa and the reindeer can eat all the food left out for them. Silverberg says they take just a nibble at each house. The remainder is either left in the house or placed in the sleigh’s built-in food dehydrator, where it is preserved for future consumption. It takes a long time to deliver all those presents, after all.

Silverberg says “Children shouldn’t put too much credence in the opinions of those who say it’s not possible to deliver presents all over the world in one night. It is possible, and it’s based on plausible science.”