Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Quantum Santa

The question of how Santa Claus manages to visit every home in the world in a single night has long baffled children of all ages. To answer the question we must look to the other conditions of his visit. Specifically, the idea that you must go to bed before Santa will come.

Santa's visit goes unseen year after year. Searches for his Arctic toy factory have similarly been unfruitful. Not because it's not there, but because it can't be seen. You see, Santa exists in a quantum state.

Quantum particles exist not as a point but as a probability cloud. Observation of the particle causes the probability waveform to collapse and it's position to become temporarily determined. Working along similar lines, come the early morning of December 25 Santa exists in millions if not billions of homes simultaneously. If he were seen his waveform would collapse and he'd exist in only one house. Obviously he'd never meet his schedule if that happened regularly. He must exist in all those places to get the job done. Children must be in bed and asleep so they won't risk seeing Santa before he can manifest in their house.

Early representations of Santa as obese were meant to be symbolic representations of how he covers such a wide area at the same time.

3 comments:

BrianAlt said...

Does each line in the space-time continuum have it's own Quantum Santa?

Scott said...

I wish I understood quantum mechanics/physics better. Any good books out there that I could comprehend, having only a moderate understanding of physics?

Ibid said...

Look for "How to Teach Physics to Your Dog". It's a new release and is supposed to be a simple and clear explanation.