The Coffee Place's Joke Stack
How about this one. It's about Santa Claus even though we are in July. :)
Here is some related information that may prove useful in studying this fascinating problem...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
The thesis makes one gross assumption that, if negated, still leaves open his existence. That assumption is that Santa operates in common three dimensional space & time. We cannot exclude the possibility that he is indeed relativistic and that he is operating in some higher dimension we mortals have not yet figured out.
Al Poskanzer
UC Irvine
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Claus Effect - a Quantum Mechanical Solution
Poskanzer points out that a simple Newtonian analysis has difficulty with the limit imposed by acceleration and atmospheric re-entry, and suggests a "higher dimensional" explanation. A more precise way of putting this is that the Claus effect is actually just an elegant mathematical construction developed to explain the observed appearance of gifts under the estimated 91.8 million trees each Dec. 25. Explaining this observation using linear, classical mechanics (as cited by Martha et al., cf.) inevitably results in the same sort of contradictions, complications and "fudging" that arise when trying to explain the wave nature of electrons to pre-schoolers.
Admittedly, Santa has been reported to have a mass greater than the average electron, but again this could be biased reporting motivated by a desire to enhance the credibility of the theory to the target audience (sub-5-year-olds). In fact, there have as yet been no credible experimental observations to confirm this assumption, which leaves the door open to quantum mechanical analysis not unlike that used in superconductivity to explain macro-wavefunction phenomena.
On this basis, one could represent Santa as a wavefunction generated as a non-linear by-product term in the interaction of the "goodwill" field (Dickens et al., op.cit.), which is strongest around the time of the winter solstice, with the Earth's magnetic field (H), which, it should be noted, has an epicenter of symmetry close to the magnetic North pole. When one identifies the eigenfunction produced in calculating the cross-product of this field with the well-known reindeer operator, one could demonstrate a finite (though, admittedly, vanishingly small) probability that the Claus effect could be observed within the time window specified by Martha and co-workers at any given point on the surface of the earth. Integrating this wavefunction with dXi (i=1,2,3) over the three-dimensional space represented by the biosphere, and again with respect to dT within the specified 31-hour time interval, one gets a non-zero probability of gift manifestation proportional to the absolute value of the cube of the magnetic field at a given point on the earth, assuming H ~ Ho. That is, the real part of the eigenvector can be written:
Re(Claus) = k * | Ho * Ho * Ho | 0 (1)
at that point. This appears to occur despite the generally accepted premise that the dominant component of the wavefunction is imaginary.
As an addendum, we also cannot ignore the possibility that on Christmas eve, Santa must be in an excited state. This would add several more terms to the Schroedinger wave equation which, upon proper analysis, if the equation can be solved we might actually be able to define the Claus tunnelling effect explaining how such a fat old man can instantly shimmey down the chimney.
Al Poskanzer
UC Irvine
--------
This page is maintained by: mark@thecoffeeplace.com
Changes were last made on 05-05-2002
Return to The Coffee Place's Joke Stack
