杏吧原创

HOW does Santa Claus manage to traverse the entire globe in just a few hours, delivering presents to millions of well-behaved children? He relies on some impressive gadgets: miniature flying robots, advanced satellites, highly sensitive surveillance devices, memory-erasing milk, self-assembling toys, and a warp-drive-powered sleigh that鈥檚 capable of bending and twisting space-time to such an extent that it slips Santa and his reindeer out of the observable universe. Where did he get all this stuff?

He could not have invented everything himself. He would have had to devise E=mc² decades before Einstein, then sprinted through a century of scientific advances, pushing his understanding of how the universe works to the level of scientists working in, say, the 23rd century. If Santa were that smart, there is no way he would have been able to resist publishing his results.

It鈥檚 clear that someone provided Santa with the technology he needs. But who?

A visitor from the future would be a strong candidate. Perhaps some 23rd-century inventor living on Earth 鈥� or, if we burn out our current home, in an underground base on Mars 鈥� had a warp-drive-related 鈥淓ureka!鈥� moment while sitting in the bathtub. Given the likelihood of water scarcity in a future habitat of that sort, that bathtub might very well have been full of their own recycled, treated and purified urine; that presumably wouldn鈥檛 bother them much, since it was probably fairly standard.

Now, how would that urine-washed thinker鈥檚 greatest work find its way back to the North Pole? Time travel? In 1949, Kurt G枚del published one of the first mathematical descriptions of how it could work. In his version, the universe has paths called closed time-like curves that might allow you to jump in a ship, fly for a while, and end up right back where you started in space and time. The hitch is that G枚del鈥檚 model calls for a cosmos that rotates, and astronomers have since discovered that the universe is expanding, not spinning. What an idiot.

Still, there are other options. Amos Ori, a physicist at the Technion in Israel, has been working on a time-travel scheme in which all you need is to harness the power of gravity to build a time-travelling path through space-time. It鈥檚 also conceivable that the universe has done this on its own, so that our 23rd-century travellers could fly through a warped region of space-time and eventually pop out far in the past.

The catch, though, is that they wouldn鈥檛 be able to control where and when they鈥檇 be going. The idea that Santa鈥檚 friends from the future would be able to even land on Earth is seriously suspect.

All of which leads to the only logical conclusion: Santa鈥檚 technology is of alien origin. Earth鈥檚 scientists have not yet had contact with intelligent, Christmas-focused life from another world, but there have been some encouraging signs. In 2007, astronomers using the European Space Agency鈥檚 XMM-Newton X-ray observatory identified a cloud of high-temperature gas in the Orion galaxy and pointed out that it vaguely resembled Santa Claus. Cynics might interpret this as an effort to attract media attention, but who knows? Perhaps it really was a signal of some sort 鈥� a message from a benevolent, Christmas-loving species saying, 鈥淗ey, we鈥檙e over here!鈥�

Why would such an advanced alien civilisation single out a white-bearded, big-bellied man and outfit him with all that technology? Perhaps they reasoned that by giving someone the tools to deliver gifts across the world, they would accelerate the moral evolution of humanity. Wars would end; diners would leave more generous tips; drivers aiming for the same parking spot would stop and wave each other ahead, saying, 鈥淣o, take it, it鈥檚 yours.鈥�

鈥淲hy would an advanced alien civilisation single out a white-bearded, big-bellied man?鈥�

But we know that these aliens are highly intelligent, so this line of thinking can鈥檛 be right either. Sadly, the answer remains elusive. Still, we do know something about the man these aliens chose, the man who would become Santa Claus. There is strong evidence that he was a shipbuilder named Jebediah Meserole, and that before moving to the North Pole, he lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.