As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renown scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) – I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.

1. No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesnt
   (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the
   workload to 15% of the total – 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an
   average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, thats 91.8 million homes. One
   presumes theres at least one good child in each.
3. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the
   rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out
   to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good
   children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the
   chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever
   snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the
   next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the
   earth (which, of course,we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will
   accept),we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million
   miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus
   feeding and etc. This means that Santas sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000
   times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on
   earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second – a conventional
   reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.
4. The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets
   nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons,
   not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional
   reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that flying reindeer (see point
   #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal anoint, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine.
   We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload – not even counting the weight of the
   sleigh – to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison – this is four times the weight of the Queen
   Elizabeth.
5. 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance – this will
   heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entering the earths atmosphere.
   The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second.
   Each. In short,they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind
   them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be
   vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to
   centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems
   ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion – If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, hes dead now.