This joke is at least 35 years old. https://www.physlink.com/Fun/IsThereSanta.cfm
this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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I know I’m “not cool” and a “booger man” because of what I’m about to say, but NDT just likes to post fun stuff. He’s not being serious and he’s not being a know-it-all. Does anyone here read his books or listen to his podcast? He has a damn comedian on for every episode.
On one of our Christmas themed university events this year there was a physics teacher who calculated how many reindeers would Santa need if we assume the friction vaporizes each one at a certain rate. Like if Santa had a line of 42000 reindeers in front of his sleigh he could go around the earth once before the last one turned medium rare.
Santa likes rich kids more than poor ones.
Hey, so does God.
i mean if the sleigh is designed properly it would be fine, it just the reindeer that need the magic and they have to have it in the first place to pull the sled.
Because I recently rediscovered this, sharing here:
All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.
--Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
I actually would prefer people see them as ideals rather than unchanging facts of the universe, because unchanging facts don't require you to fight to keep them like ideals do, and I'm tired of hearing diatribes about the world being just instead of people actually making it just.
INDEED
clown-to-clown conversation
NDT's not even going to mention that Santa probably solved or approximately solved the traveling salesman problem for a complete graph of several hundred million vertices embedded in a spherical topology?
I suppose if he's magic he doesn't need to solve anything.
Santa superpostion.
Why is Santa only delivering to Christians?
Probably because he was a Christian.
He's dead. I'm sorry, son
That's why us filthy secularists gift each other.
Parts of Santa's narrative were adopted by colonists in New York, which blended St Nicholas and stories around Odin. Odin from Greek Mythology was known to fly around on a horse, knew who was good or bad, and at times had presents. In New York at some point, this all changed and a prior diety type figure in Odin became commercialized. The white horse became reindeer. Santa eventually adopted Coca-Cola's colors and the commercialization and rebooting of Odin was complete. Thanks for reading.
The answer is most likely "the speedforce". The amount of handwaving used to justify going fast in these movies are overwhelming.
Santa is a shared delusion running on people’s minds in a distributed fashion, known in magic occult spheres as an egregore. All of those minds then manifest Santa by their own deeds and the spread of Santa memes. Santa‘s sled is everywhere at once as the sequence of delivered packages doesn’t matter. One Santa manifested everywhere through human thought and action.
Isn’t this how gods worked in Terry Pratchett’s books?
No, but it is basically how Santa worked, as seen in Hogfather.
Gods are a species that become more powerful the more worshippers they have and essentially powerless when they have no followers, as seen in Small Gods.
Wasn't the Hogfather an old winter god?
Maybe? It’s been a while.
You're thinking of American Gods by Gaiman.
Ffs that guy is annoying. Did not even do the math, which should have told him that hypersonic does not even scratch the surface unless he has an extremely wide drop-off region.
I can't believe you're really taking his comment seriously?! He made a post about Santa's reindeer and sleigh vaporizing due to the speed of travel. It's supposed to be absurd, not a science lesson.
It's a little ironic that you say NDT is annoying for his joke while complaining that his math (from a joke) does'nt make sense.
See? Eheran GOT YOU. He knew that Tyson was joking, so he played it straight and made you look like a dupe!
Oh wait, you're doing the straight man switcheroo, I've been bamboozled again.
I thought he could have been the next Carl Sagan, but instead, he's that guy you never invite to parties.
I dunno about you, but I'm not sure if I'd have invited Carl Sagan either...it'd take him ~13.8 billion years just to get dessert ready.
Y'all don't get it. Santa is a hive mind parasite that embeds itself in people and takes over at the later months of the year. It tends to hibernate the rest of the year although much like pollen, it seems to be waking earlier and earlier.
Climate change is causing Christmas creep? It’s worse than we thought!!
Naw, just your standard profit seeking.
It's not a coincidence they start playing Xmas music in October now... Only a matter of time until it's year round. Blasted climate change!
It's a clever quantum operation where all the houses are entangled in a superposition and moved into a state where all the presents are delivered. So when one kid opens the present the state collapses and all the presents are delivered.
It's a little more convoluted, but you're on the right track.
(This is my single favorite sketch of all time.)
I genuinely hate his uh akshully approach to science
It's a joke, not a science lesson. Nobody got hurt.
I agree, it harms no-one, but I'm still not obligated to like his brand
Imagine sniffing your own farts this much