December 8, 2009 – How does he do it? How does Santa whisk himself all over the globe in just a matter of hours? One researcher from North Carolina State offers some "clues" which show that the jolly old man is far ahead of the rest of us in understanding materials science, thermodynamics, and relativity.
First of all, Santa’s sleigh is a marvel of aerodynamics, far surpassing any conventional air transportation. The entire truss is made from a honeycombed titanium alloy, making it very lightweight and 10×-20× stronger than anything existing today — and it can morph its shape to slice through the air, e.g. by tucking its runners during flight and spreading them to land on various surfaces like pitched roofs, according to NCSU’s Larry Silverberg, prof. of mechanical and aerospace engineering, who claims to have completed a six-month "visiting scholar program" at Santa’s Worshop labs in the North Pole. Moreover, the entire sleigh has a nanostructured porous "skin" that creates a surrounding low-pressure region, reducing drag by as much as 90%.
Powering the sleigh is the well-known team of reindeer — but now understood to be in precise alignment, wearing cold-fusion-powered jetpacks. The driver’s reins not only turn the reindeers’ heads but also direct the orientation of the jetpacks. (The principles of cold fusion remain a closely guarded secret, he notes.)
Having a firm grasp on the theory of relativity and its implications in our physical world (i.e., stretching time, squeezing space, and bending light), Santa steers his sleigh to utilize controllable domains of time-modification called "relativity clouds" to zip around the ~200M sq. mi. of earth seemingly in the blink of an eye. Thus, the ~100mph speeds his CF-enabled steeds achieve in his frame of reference appears to the rest of us as wink-of-an-eye travel.
Inside the sleigh is a veritable treasure-trove of electronic gadgetry, including laser sensors to detect upcoming thermals and wind conditions (for optimizing navigation); and Santa’s "magic sack" — i.e., a reversible thermodynamic processor, powered by carbon-based chimney soot and "local materials," that applies high-precision electromagnetic fields to create toys on-site (eliminating gift transportation and dramatically reducing the vehicle’s overall weight).
