Not all that long if Santa knew how to stretch time like a rubber band!
About six “Santa months,” according to Larry Silverberg, a professor
of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State
University. He’s a Santa math specialist (really) whose students took on
the problem.
Here's how he got there: Santa has to deliver gifts to around 200
million children spread over 200 million square miles. Because each
household has 2.67 children, there are about 75 million homes to visit
and the average distance between homes is about 1.63 miles, Santa needs
to cover 122 million miles.
To cover that distance in 24 hours on Christmas, Mr. Claus’s sleigh
would need to travel at a whopping average speed of 5,083,000 mph.
Silverberg argues that the feat is possible because the sleigh would
have to travel 130 times more slowly than the speed of light, which is
300 million meters per second, or 669,600,000 mph. Because something
already moves that quickly, it would be difficult, but not impossible,
for Santa to travel at 5,083,000 mph.
Traveling at 5,083,000 mph seems a bit fast for a plump old man so
Silverberg and his students found a more realistic scenario: relativity
clouds. Relativity clouds, based on relative physics, allow Santa to
stretch time like a rubber band and give him months to deliver gifts,
while only a few minutes pass for the rest of us. (Silverberg theorizes
that Santa's understanding of relative physics is far greater than our
own.)
Silverberg’s theory is plausible, says Danny Maruyama, a doctoral
candidate researching systems physics at the University of Michigan. If
Santa were to travel at about the speed of light, share the delivery
work-load with his elves and makes use of relativity clouds, he would be
able to deliver the presents in about five minutes Earth time, Maruyama
says. “While I don’t know much about relativity clouds myself, I think
it’s very possible that a man who flies in a sleigh, lives with elves,
and has flying pet reindeer could have the technology needed to utilize
relativity clouds," he says.
And what if Santa deployed multiple sleighs? Silverberg says if Santa
and his elves use 750 sleighs to deliver the gifts and, using their
knowledge of relativity physics, take roughly six Santa months (to us
humans, only 24 hours), each sleigh only needs to travel about 80 mph, a
much more realistic scenario. “At 80 miles per hour, you just throw a
couple jetpacks on either sides of the sleighs and you’re there,”
Silverberg says.
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