Ok, since it is two days until Christmas I suppose I can stop ignoring all the flashing lights and twinkly things and incessant “Holiday Music”. (Yeah, how time flies..!) I’ll even do a post discussing Santa. You see, it came to my attention that Google Earth, in collaboration with NORAD, no less, will be tracking Santa on Christmas Eve. See here and here for more details.
It sort of got my attention for the obvious reason -they’re tracking Santa!- but then when I went to browse the site, I thought I’d certainly point it out to you since on the further information for kids page (yes, in case you weren’t sure, it seems that children are a major target in this operation – check out the links to, er, fun things for them) there’s an “About Santa” page. Well, I had to click, since I’d certainly learn something. Indeed, I learned that some physics thinking has gone into pondering the Santa Phenomenon:
The fact that Santa Claus is more than 16 centuries old, yet does not appear to age, is our biggest clue that he does not work within time as we know it. His Christmas Eve trip may seem to take around 24 hours, but to Santa it may last days, weeks or even months in standard time. Santa would not want to rush the important job of distributing presents to children and spreading Christmas happiness everyone, so the only logical conclusion is that Santa functions within a different time-space continuum than the rest of us do.
Yep. I’m going to have to try to work this into my next Relativity class. No doubt about it.
-cvj
Or, alternatively, there’s this Savage Chickens cartoon: http://www.savagechickens.com/2008/12/childlike-wonder.html