The Truth About Santa: Wormholes, Robots, and What Really Happens on Christmas Eve

By Gregory Mone

We all know Santa Claus: fat, jolly, omniscient, swift. Lives in a nice home in the Arctic, with the missus and a pack of elves.
Well, forget what you know. Santa Claus is from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, as it turns out, and he's not as fat as he used to be. Here's something else you didn't know: he's been dabbling in some futuristic technology, and has found myriad ways to make his job possible. How can Santa know who's been naughty and nice? Simple: implant listening devices into your ornaments. How can he make it to every house Christmas Eve? That's nothing a little cloning and some wormholes can't solve. And he has plenty of other tactics: quantum entanglement, organ replacement, drug-induced hibernation, and unmanned aerial vehicles, to name just a few.
In this fantastically illustrated, affectionate, and hilarious book, Gregory Mone uses science and technology to overturn the assumption that Santa can't be real. Drawing on the work of accomplished scientists and researchers, Mone gives us a whole new portrait of this remarkable man and the miracles he makes happen every year. With imaginative artwork and an eye-catching package, this book makes an outstanding Christmas gift for just about anyone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Release date: Nov 3, 2009
• ISBN: 9781608191147

Gregory Mone

Gregory Mone is a contributing editor at Popular Science magazine. His feature articles have appeared in Wired, Discover, Women's Health, National Geographic Adventure, and The Best American Science Writing 2007. He is also the author of the novel The Wages of Genius. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two children.

Book preview

The Truth About Santa

The Truth About Santa

WORMHOLES, ROBOTS,

AND WHAT REALLY HAPPENS ON CHRISTMAS EVE

Gregory Mone

To Nika

Contents

INTRODUCTION

ORIGINS

1. Why Santa Can’t Use FedEx

2. Where Santa Got All His Wonderful Tools

3. The Aliens Who Love Christmas

4. From Shipbuilder to Toy Maker

5. Why Santa Needs Lieutenants

HEALTH

6. Santa’s Shrinking Waistline

7. How Santa Handles His Booze

8. Robotic Surgeons in Silly Outfits

9. The Immortality Paradox

10. Why Santa Hibernates

SANTA INC.

11. The Strategic Elvis Convention

12. Memory-Erasing Milk

13. The North Pole Is Melting

14. Living Green in Greenland

15. Why All Elves Are Clones

SURVEILLANCE

16. Kringle’s Eyes in the Skies

17. Naughty or Nice

18. Guilt-Ridden Visions of Sugarplums

19. Why Santa Ditched Coal

TRANSPORTATION

20. The Chimney as Wormhole Mouth

21. How to Kill a Santa

22. Time Travel and Delivery Tracking

23. Santa (Almost) Never Sleeps

24. A Note About Whether or Not Reindeer Can Really Fly

25. Reindeer and Public Relations

26. Turn Up the Warp Drive, Rudolph!

INFILTRATION

27. Baby, It’s Cold in Interdimensional Space

28. The Instantly Invisible Man

29. Quiet, the Ornaments Are Listening

DELIVERY

30. How Santa Knows What You Want

31. What Really Happened at Tunguska

32. Toys That Build Themselves

33. Teleporting Kittens

Acknowledgments

A Note on the Author

By the Same Author

The Truth About Santa

Introduction

Belief in Santa claus is fading. In some cities, children as young as sixteen are now rumored to be stomping home from school in the days leading up to Christmas and crying before their parents, Why did you lie to me? Why did you tell me he was real?

These confused young people shouldn’t be blamed for their newfound doubts. On some level, Santa’s annual rounds, and so many of the other details surrounding his operation, do seem impossible. Think about it. He knows if we’ve been bad or good. All of us. He also knows what we all want for Christmas, when we’re sleeping, and when we’re awake. To most people, that probably doesn’t just sound implausible; it undoubtedly seems a little creepy, too.

The whole immortality issue usually spurs a few questions, too, especially since the legends suggest that Santa lives on a diet of milk and cookies. Normally, this sort of eating behavior leads to obesity, heart disease, and, in all likelihood, an early death. According to what we know about health and nutrition, Santa wouldn’t make it to sixty, let alone six hundred.

Then there’s his travel routine. Skeptics doubt that he’s really able to traverse the entire globe in just a few hours via a reindeer-drawn sleigh. They scoff at the notion that reindeer can fly in the first place. They wonder how it is that Santa can slip down the slimmest chimneys despite his reportedly prodigious waistline. They laugh at the notion that he can do so while carrying a sack over his shoulder that somehow contains enough toys for most of the kids on the planet. And how is it that he never makes mistakes? His sleigh never slips off one of those slanted, snow-covered rooftops and crushes some family’s SUV in the driveway below. He never trips a security alarm or gets caught on video. You never see a camera-phone-captured clip of him on YouTube.

There are many arguments that attempt to refute the existence of Santa Claus. But they are all wrong. (Except for the reindeer one.) They are, in a word, uneducated. The problem with kids today, and the reason they are so quick to give up believing, is that they lack the basic knowledge of the universe required for a true understanding of Santa. As anyone with a decent grasp of physics, biology, and materials science understands, Santa’s advertised abilities are perfectly plausible.

Yes, Santa is real, and this book will reveal, for the first time, how he completes his seemingly impossible annual mission. The simple answer? Technology. Santa has at his disposal some of the most advanced equipment, devices, materials, and means of transportation in this or any other universe.

The book will first address the origins of St. Nick and his operation, including Santa’s true identity, whether or not he really completes all the deliveries himself, and why it wouldn’t make sense for him to go the corporate route and outsource the whole business. Then we’ll explore some questions about his health and explain how on-demand organ printers, intelligent robotic surgeons, and a hibernation-based antiaging program have helped him thrive despite his terrible diet.

We’ll delve into Santa’s ties to big business and the true nature of the North Pole, including its automated elf-cloning system and electricity-generating underwater turbines. The workshop has a massive server farm, too, which you’d have to expect given the amount of surveillance data Santa collects each year. He knows if you’ve been bad or good because he uses flying robotic spies.

And how does he move around the world so quickly? Think warp drive and wormholes. This book will detail the function of both, and also explain how Santa’s suit doubles as an invisibility cloak and why all the gifts he deposits are either self-assembled under the tree or, in rare cases, teleported.

Of course, we’ll also discuss some of the relevant psychological and sociological issues at the North Pole. For example, how the positively transcendent beauty of Mrs. Claus led Santa to reject the idea of cloning himself and why robots don’t change diapers. If you’re looking for the recipe for Mrs. Claus’s eggnog, though, you will be disappointed. How she achieves such a perfect balance of cream, egg, and brandy we will never know.

PART I

Origins

1

Why Santa Can’t Use FedEx

OUTSOURCING, CARBON-EMISSION-CANCELING SAPLINGS, AND OTHER COSTLY COMPLEXITIES OF DOING CHRISTMAS THE CORPORATE WAY

The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke used to say that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. This is particularly relevant in the case of Santa Claus. For years people have attributed the successful completion of his annual rounds to magical tricks. Yet every one of Santa’s amazing abilities comes from real technology. And he needs these fabulous gadgets, vehicles, and devices because it would be too hard for one man, or even millions of people, to accomplish his annual mission without them. It would be ridiculously expensive, too. How costly? A. T. Kearney consultant Mike Moriarty and his team recently looked at what it would take if Santa couldn’t slow time or fly behind a set of reindeer but was instead powered by a bottomless bank account.

First, they decided that Santa would probably rely on the Internet. Using a mail room to collect wish lists, or even staffing a call center to speak with kids directly, would be too slow, costly, and complex. Moriarty suggested that instead of writing letters, kids would register for gifts on sites like Facebook, Club Penguin, or MySpace. There would be limitations, of course. Santa couldn’t allow them to request a Ferrari or a window seat on the first space tourism plane. Parents and guardians would need to be involved. They would have to be able to check to make sure that little Robby wasn’t asking for the Mature-rated game they already said he couldn’t have. They could assist with the naughty-or-nice question, too, and help Santa determine whether a given child actually deserves a gift. Kids can’t be trusted to assess their own behavior.

Moriarty concluded that Santa would probably want to steer a percentage of kids to virtual presents, such as gift cards, that could be fulfilled online. This way, he would have fewer presents to deliver and, as a result, lower costs and environmental impact.

What about those friendly little elves? Keeping them on the payroll all year wouldn’t really make sense, from a business standpoint. No, Santa would outsource his toy manufacturing operations. This would save him serious money, but it would add another level of complexity. Santa has a reputation to uphold, a brand to manage, so he would have to ensure that all of these factories adhered to the best standards possible, in terms of working conditions, wages, quality of the goods. If you think Mattel looked bad after that lead paint was found in their toys, imagine what kind of public relations damage this would have done to Santa Claus. People would be cementing their chimneys shut.

The manufacturing facilities would have to be green. Given the risk that climate change poses to the North Pole—a topic to be discussed at length in chapter 13—Santa would want guarantees that every factory be as environmentally friendly as possible. He’d insist that they take advantage of recycled materials, reusable building materials, and alternative energy whenever possible.

Still, it’s really the next step, moving all those toys from factories to homes, that would do the bulk of the damage to the atmosphere. Moriarty and his team concluded that Santa would have to avoid air freight whenever possible, though it’s the fastest option, and move the goods via container ships, rail lines, and, eventually, old-fashioned delivery trucks. To offset all the fuel burned along the way, he suggested planting Christmas tree saplings along the tree line in Russia and Canada.

The budget for this entire endeavor would be absurd, especially if you add in delivery: not just getting these gifts to kids’ doorsteps, but slipping them under the tree in the middle of the night. Completing this final step in the U.S. alone would call for millions of highly trained employees, probably former military operatives, breaking and entering repeatedly without being seen or heard. The domestic tally for an operation of this scale would cost in the range of $30 billion per year.

There is good reason why Santa employs cost-free and happy elves in workshops that do not actually exist in physical reality and delivers gifts using relatively greenhouse-gas-neutral reindeer power, Moriarty concluded. In addition to being nice, it saves Santa a bundle.

2

Where Santa Got All His

Wonderful Tools

COSMIC STRINGS, WARPED SPACE-TIMES, ROTATING UNIVERSES, AND THE LIMITS OF TIME MACHINES

In the following pages, you’re going to hear a lot about Santa’s gadgets. How he uses miniature flying robots, advanced satellites, highly sensitive listening devices, and a warp-drive-powered sleigh that’s capable of bending and twisting space-time to such an extent that it actually slips Santa and his reindeer out of the observable universe. But before we discuss how the jolly old elf uses these futuristic tools to deliver toys to every good girl and boy in the world in just a few hours, one glaring question needs to be addressed.

Where did he get all this stuff?

He could not have invented everything himself. If this were the case, he’d need to be both a ridiculously smart scientist and an unbelievably resourceful

Reviews for The Truth About Santa

[manleywalker · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a very funny book and much of the technology the author posits is quite plausible. That being said, I was disappointed. There is much blue humor in the book. While I don't object to that, I found it misplaced here as I was hoping that this would be something I could share with younger members of my family. Also, and perhaps more to the point, it really feels more like a technology book and less like a Christmas book.

[jessiqa_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a fake history book in the vein of John Hodgman, i.e. very funny and told with an air of complete plausibility. However, there is quite a lot of not-made-up science involved. Not enough to makes one's head spin, but enough to make me wish there was a bibliography at the back so I could explore the articles the author read on human hibernation and organ printing. Be certain that once the holiday season rolls around next, I will be sharing these true facts on Santa with anyone who will listen.

[universehall · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I was all set to enjoy this book.How could I go wrong? It was supposedly a humorous collection of pseudo-scientific facts about Santa. I love Santa. I love Christmas. And I rather enjoy humorous collections of pseudo-scientific facts. I mean, even the cover looks entertaining.Unfortunately... I was disappointed. This book had several problems. For a start, the fact that it's presented as "humorous". It really isn't humorous. That is, unless you find the idea of Santa's wife being extraordinarily unfaithful or Santa having a drinking problem "humorous". Now, don't get me wrong -- those two subjects CAN potentially be funny, if they are presented right... but they weren't. They just came across as kind of sad.Secondly... what is the audience of this book? I assumed, upon picking it up, that it was probably for children or teens -- probably the kind of thing that you present, as a joke, to a kid who no longer believes in Santa. However, as the above themes seem to indicate, I don't think it's appropriate for children OR teens. Thirdly... there are questionable moral issues that are improperly dealt with. Not just the adultery and alcohol abuse -- but subjects like cloning and brainwash and murder.Fourthly.... even though it had a lot of pseudo-scientific facts as I mentioned, they were presented in such a way that they were BORING! Fifth... it just didn't put me in a Christmassy mood.I won't say that the book was ENTIRELY bad. It did have some interesting things in it... Like, the fact that if Santa really did visit every child in the world, spending an average of about thirty seconds in each house with NO travel time in between, it would take him somewhere in the area of two-hundred years to complete one round. (I wonder about things like that.) However, reading this entire book simply isn't worth the trouble if all you're going to come away with is a couple random tidbits of info.Unless you rather dislike Santa and want to go on disliking him (and aren't put off by pages of boring jargon), I don't recommend picking up this book.

[attolia_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Science write Gregory Mode uses the story of Santa Clause to provide brief tongue-in-cheek descriptions of numerous emerging and speculative technologies. He covers a lot of material, but as (sadly or fortunately, depending on your point of view) doesn't get very deep in his descriptions. The humor is weak. While I, personally, would have preferred more depth in the science, I did find it a mildly interesting introduction to some of science and technologies described.

[momweaver · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a funny Sci-Fi look at Christmas. Mone puts a completely different spin on the origin of the most common Christmas myths. While I enjoyed it, this book would be especially good for the teenage Sci-Fi Fan. I'm sure that my son will like it even better than I did. I found myself thinking of several friends that I would have to pass it on to.

[katyphoenix · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book was amazing! It has become one of my favorite holiday books, and I have been recommending it to everyone I know with a quirky sense of humor. If you have a quirky sense of humor, or have ever seriously pondered how Santa could possibly pull it off. It's broken up into sections and chapters within each sections so its easy to read just a little bit at a time. It's also very capable to put a smile on your face when you see Santa's image once you've read the book. It's very clever and approaches Santa in a very scientific way that borders on absurd. I loved it.

[laffrey_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

There is no Santa. You’ve known it since you were 10 or so. There is no way one person, even with the help of a bunch of little elves could possibly deliver all those gifts in one night, right? That’s what you think! Gregory Mone is here to prove you wrong! In his latest book, The Truth About Santa, Mone uses the latest scientific theories to show how it is possible for the jolly old elf to visit us all each year. So, is it possible? Mone quotes physicists, biologists, and technology experts to explain each part of Santa’s operation. He has an answer for everything. Are the answers convincing? For the most part. Mone’s done his research and it shows. Do you have to be a scientist to understand it? No, but that doesn’t mean it’s not confusing. There was too much information about too many different facets of the Santa story. What really threw me off were the “non-science” parts. Though the idea of Santa being from Brooklyn was amusing, the repeated references to the Mrs. Claus and her attractiveness (especially to men other than Santa) were annoying. Other scenes, which seemed to be added for humor (the Santa/Elvis convention) just weren’t funny enough to justify inclusion in the final work. I like the concept; I was intrigued by some of the information and occasionally amused. But overall, I just didn’t enjoy this book.

[sullijo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the book I've been looking for ever since I was a parent. I just never knew it. Now when my children ask how Santa Claus can fit down the chimney or deliver millions of presents across the world in a few hours, I'll have the answer:Santa is a bio-engineered immortal equipped by aliens with technology from the future.At least that's the hypothesis of Gregory Mone, a contributing editor to Popular Science and author of The Truth about Santa: Wormholes, Robots, and What Really Happens on Christmas Eve. Mone uses his considerable scientific knowledge to explain how Santa, using technology that is still decades away for us mere mortals, can accomplish his herculean feats.- Delivering presents across the globe in a single night? The work of an army of lieutenants utilizing wormholes built into our chimneys and windows.- Flying reindeer? A myth; Santa uses a warp-powered sleigh for his personal transportation. (Because of the hazards of involved Santa shuns wormhole travel. His lieutenants are well compensated for the risk.)- Elves making toys? Actually their main job is maintaining the huge IT infrastructure needed to support Santa's operations.Mone has crafted a book that combines a wicked (and slightly NSFW) sense of humor with a survey of near-future tech, all wrapped in the peppermint shell of Santa's annual rounds. Adults will get a chuckle out of the science fiction-inspired explanations, but I expect children will suspect the truth: that Mone is just a patsy for Santa, throwing us off the trail.As every child knows: it's all magic.

[rastaphrog · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

First off, forget everything you think you know about Santa. It's all rumor, purposeful misleading, or media hype. That being said, in this book you'll learn the "real" story behind how Santa is able to do everything that he does, and some of the things he does during the "off season".Gregory Mone explains how Santa accomplishes everything he does through the use of advanced scientific technology not available to the rest of us. (Santa has some VERY interesting connections.) Some of it seems far fetched, but using current human knowledge and research in progress, he explains how some of it may actually become available to us one day. You'll learn how Santa has been able to live for so long, how those toys are made, and how widespread his supply chain is.While the book is about Santa, it is not meant for children. The concepts discussed need a higher level of understanding than they would have in most cases, tho some points would make for interesting answers to give a child when asked about Santa.All in all, it's a fun and interesting read. The chapters are short and can be read in small doses while you may be doing something that's unavoidable but doesn't require your full attention. What I often call "Bathroom reading". *G*

[meggyweg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a cute and amusing sci-fi take on Santa Claus. The author establishes how Santa knows what every child wants and delivers all the gifts in one night, and how he funds his operation. Mone, a science writer, explains the technology necessary for Santa to do what he does -- which is provided by aliens, of course. We humans have nowhere near the capabilities yet. But he also lets us know what humans are capable of doing, and the theories behind things like wormholes and hyperdrive sleigh engines that Santa uses to get his toys delivered on time. And how the reindeer appear to fly when, clearly, they cannot actually do so. And why it's a REALLY bad idea to sneak out of bed and try to catch Santa under your tree on Christmas Eve.This isn't really a book for children; the science is too complicated and there are some references to sex (Santa's "ho ho ho" initially referred to his promiscuous wife). I would recommend it as a Christmas gag gift for a teen or adult science nut. The short chapters make it especially good for toilet reading.

[bibliovermis · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is funny and has some interesting theories about how Santa Claus manages to do all the things he does. Most of these theories are based on (or at least, derived from) facts.The content of the book is a little more adult-oriented than expected—the frequent jokes about alcohol, drug use, and extra-marital affairs would probably go over a younger reader's head, or confuse them, which is a shame because I know a lot of young readers who would enjoy a book about science and Santa. In the end, though I chuckled a few times, I found myself wishing the author had gone into the science more, or at least come up with some funnier jokes.

[koalamom_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" and this book tells you just how he does it, but even though you now know the science behind Santa you can still believe that he is real and that he does manage to get to every home in the world at midnight on Christmas Eve.And none of the stuff in the book is made up - or at least most of it isn't. This is real science - around today or at least in the offing - not science fiction - though some of it started there and some may still be in that realm.But it makes Santa's trek plausible - well, if you really believe!