Keeping up with the Claus: Quantum Mechanics

Santa Claus, as we know him, doesn’t exist -– sorry to break it to you. Yes, I know, it’s devastating -– no flying reindeer, no magic sleigh, and no jolly old man squeezing down your chimney. But before you throw out the milk and cookies, what if the logistics of the Christmas operation weren’t so far-fetched? 

With 2.5 children per household on average, Santa would have to visit nearly eight hundred million homes in around 37.5 hours (the length of the night of December 24, accounting for time zones and assuming he travels under the cover of darkness). Assuming his naughty-nice list is split cleanly in half, we can assume he delivers around 400 million gifts in total. Now, considering he has to visit almost six thousand homes per second, he’s moving fast; he has about 0.000169 seconds per visit to park the sleigh, climb down the chimney, eat a cookie, drink a glass of milk, and leave a gift before disappearing into the night. And this calculation doesn’t even account for the travel time between homes. 

Knowing that the surface area of the earth is around 510 million square kilometers, each of the 800 million homes would be at least 800 meters apart if laid out on a grid. Let us assume Santa uses 1/4 of his time traveling and 3/4 of his time placing the present, eating a cookie, etc. That would mean our jolly friend would have only 0.000127 seconds to stay per home and must travel at approximately 19 million meters per second–over 55 thousand times the speed of sound! Disregarding the fact that any normal sleigh and reindeer would completely vaporize at that speed, how does Santa achieve this?

A theoretical phenomenon called quantum superposition may make this possible. Santa may be utilizing this in which his existence acts like a wave, where he can exist in every state (or in every house in this case) at once. That is, until he is observed, in which case the wave function collapses, and only one of him can exist. This may also explain why it is impossible to sneak up on Santa, as being observed would collapse his wave function, and he would have to physically be in one of the billion homes he visits at the same time. In this case, there would be a one-in-a-billion chance you would actually see him. It’s like Schrödinger’s box, except filled with holiday cheer, not an uncertain feline. 

As wild as it sounds, Santa’s mastery of quantum mechanics offers a plausible (albeit theoretical) solution to the otherwise impossible task of delivering presents around the globe in one night… 

…Or maybe we’re overthinking him, and he can just magically teleport. But then again, this is a science article!

Sources:

https://www.labmate-online.com/news/news-and-views/5/breaking-news/how-fast-does-santa-travel/32594
https://www.forbes.com/sites/drdonlincoln/2021/12/24/the-science-of-santa-v20/
https://www.towerfast.com/press-room/santa-claus-science-physics-christmas
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/quantum-teleportation