Don’t believe Einstein? Then explain Santa Claus!

There’s no Granite Geek next week – it’s Christmas after all! – so here’s an advance look at next week’s Monitor column.

There’s a standard way to shut down physics cranks who say they’ve disproved Einstein –for some reason, cranks never “disprove” scientists who aren’t famous – and that’s to point to your GPS.

The satellite system for tracking our location on Earth works because it factors in Einstein’s two theories of relativity, which tells the effect that gravity and motion have on time itself.

A clock on a near-Earth-orbit satellite loses 7 millionths of a second per day compared to a clock at sea level due to the satellite’s movement, as predicted by special relativity, but gains 45 microseconds due to differences in the gravitation field, as predicted by general relativity.

GPS, which depends on synchronized clocks, has to factor in that 38-microsecond difference in order to be accurate. So you can tell the crank “If Einstein was wrong, GPSwouldn’t work” and no further discussion is needed.

But that’s a pretty dry response. This time of year, there’s a better comeback: “Then explain Santa Claus and Rudolph, smarty-pants!”

Think about it. Depending on how many children are nice rather than naughty, Kris Kringle’s sled has to travel at least 15 billion miles in 24 hours, which means going at least 650 million mph, or 95% the speed of light.

If it wasn’t for relativistic time dilation, no way he could rummage through the giant sack to find the right toy for a billion or more homes in a mere 24 hours. But at 95% the speed of light, Santa experiences time going 6 times slower than the rest of us, meaning he has almost a week in relativistic time to get everything done. No problem.

And what about Rudolph’s nose? In song it is depicted as a beacon to light the sleigh’s way “one foggy Christmas Eve” but that makes no sense – red is a crummy wavelength for spotlights. Obviously it is red because the sleigh is traveling at very, very high speed away from us: He’s Rudolph the Red-Shift Reindeer.

I guarantee that pointing this out will change the physics crank’s mind. Unfortunately, the way the world is going that probably means he’ll transition to being a chemtrail crank, but you can’t have everything. 

Be that as it may, Merry Christmas!