December 14th: Quantum Entanglement
All this talk of Father Christmas travelling around the
world in one night, visiting every child and delivering at least one gift for
each of them (or something unpleasant for the ones who have not met his ill-defined
but thoroughly checked criteria for being
'nice', but either way, mass is donated to each child), it's all well
and good. But how could he do this? It's all very well saying that he's
'magic', but that's not really an explanation, that's hand waving and invoking
the mythical Macguffin.
In this day of instant internet access and Children being
better at computers than their parents, it's harder and harder to fob children off
with blaze non-explanations. They'll just go and look it up if you don't
provide a satisfactory answer, and then they'll realise the whole 'Father
Christmas is real' thing is just an elaborate con told to kids for ill-defined
reasons. Their ignorance will be shattered by finding out the harsh truth at
too-young an age, they will lose all trust of their parents and become a
cynical and ill-disciplined child, eventually becoming an authority-bucking
teenager who will have no qualms in experimenting with drugs and casual sex,
eventually dropping out of the education system and becoming a homeless
derelict who survives thanks to petty theft and small-scale drug dealing. All
because you couldn't think of a good explanation for the activities of Santa
Clause. Is that what you want?
So, here's an idea. Is it possible that the Santa-system is
one based on quantum
entanglement? That mysterious system whereby previously connected
particles/molecules/miscellaneous remain entangled by some unknown mechanism. Quantum mechanics has
given us a lot of weird stuff to consider, and this is one of the good ones.
You split two entangled particles and separate them by a great distance, then
manipulate one, and the other will show direct signs of that manipulation,
despite the fact that it's very far away. A direct connection that transcends space
and time? That would come in handy, wouldn't it.
So maybe Santa is the master of quantum? If he was capable
of large-scale quantum manipulation, it would explain a lot. Let's look at the
arguments.
· As previously pointed out, his naughty/nice list
has to take into account the vast fluctuations in the Earth's child population,
their associated behaviours and locations, and as a result this list has to be
constantly updated and checked at least twice. This would require an
extraordinary degree of computational power. Modern CPUs may not be up to the
task, but a quantum
computer? That should be easily capable. But the processes that would
support quantum computing are notoriously fragile,
and would probably require a very stable, low energy environment to function
properly, so Santa would have to spend a lot of time in some very
cold, isolated environment...
·
Actually, how can Santa possibly know if every
child is being bad or good? The songs suggest he personally watches every child
which, as well as being creepy, is a big task. But what if he had a direct
quantum connection into the home of every child? For someone with his
manipulation of quantum processes skills, it wouldn't take much, just a small
sample of matter from something that is still in the child's home, per se.
Let's say, I don't know, the ink from a pen or graphite from a pencil? But even
then, the establishing of a quantum connection to every child would require
every child to write something and send it directly to Santa. Which is
ridiculous...
·
How does he get to every child's home in a
single night? Well, one possible explanation for quantum entanglement is that
entangled things stay connected
via wormholes, that Science-fiction
go-to favourite. Connecting two disparate points
of space to allow instantaneous travel between them in a manner that is outside
the usual temporal constraints, that would be handy wouldn't it? Using the
initial connection established by the child's scribbling (see above), Saint
Nick could establish more reliable connections with each visit, all he'd have
to do is leave something in the child's possession that he created and that's
entangled with something in his home base. So it would have to be something the
child didn't have before, but that they'd be unlikely to panic about or dispose
of. Like a toy, for example. Teenagers eventually stop writing to Santa and put
their toys away, so he stops coming.
·
Actually, what would this wormhole travel look
like, to someone who was lucky enough to witness it? It's bound to be a very
high energy process, so it would look like a large fat man emerging from a
bright, high-energy opening that appears to lead to a tight tunnel that he
couldn't possibly fit into according to normal spatial laws. But people who see
this wouldn't have the vocabulary to explain this, so they'd have to describe
it using metaphors
they can relate to.
·
But Santa isn't often spotted, is he? You'd
think with millions of children trying to catch a glimpse, a few hundred would
be successful, just based on the law of averages alone? But if Santa has
control of quantum processes, he could well have the ability to manipulate his superposition.
Santa may exist in a condition of unspecified possibilities. If someone does
see him, it should be feasible for him to collapse the quantum
wave function to a state where he isn't there at all. Or maybe he can
transfer into some parallel
world where he's in the room but the child isn't. It's quantum, why the
hell not?
So there you go. If a child ever asks you how Santa does
what he does, feel free to give them the full Quantum explanation.
'But Dean', you may say, 'how does he do all this? What
gives him such mastery of quantum processes? And what's the deal with the
Reindeer?'
I don't know. He's not actually real, so just chill out, no need
to get carried away.
Twitter: @garwboy
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