Last year we wondered how many gifts Santa delivered. This year we wondered if Santa should be delivering gifts. We could have a COVID headline - Superspreader Santa delivers disease at super speed, along with a few billion gifts.
But don't worry. Dr. Anthony Fauci, now our most trusted doctor in North America, indicated Santa was "good to go". He announced on Sesame Street that he personally traveled to the North Pole and gave him the COVID-19 vaccine: "I measured his level of immunity and he is good to go." I am always focused on this question of how fast and how many gifts. Here's the NORAD site with answers for me:
How Fast Does Santa’s Sleigh Go?
Santa has A LOT of work to do on Christmas Eve. This is why we are able to spot him out practicing throughout the year. So, how fast does his sleigh go when Santa has to get to more than 90 million homes on one night?
It goes faster than the speed of light! The elves know all of the math, because they are responsible for helping to keep Santa’s sleigh up and running. According to the elf team in charge, his top speeds are 650 miles per second—which is 3,000 times the speed of sound!
Luckily, our state-of-the-art live map is able to capture Santa’s super-fast speeds. This way you can get live updates on where he is, no matter how fast he is moving.
On this topic from the Irish Times: "In a nutshell, quantum mechanics allows objects – including Santa, Rudolph and co – to be in many places simultaneously. That is the key ingredient, which allows for his extraordinarily efficient delivery on Christmas Eve."
Isn't this a wonderful image for a hopeful Christmas day and New Year's! This is the seahorse in the pond at the Winterthur Museum in Pennsylvania.
Each Florida day has begun by taking pictures of the rising sun. Today the sun is behind a veil of grey that is so uniform the camera struggles to focus. Mist has been floating in and out of the shore and the inland clouds look like they will bring rain. And then in 10 minutes, everything changes. The sun rises above the cloud bank on the horizon and a glorious sky emerges. The ocean and sky are still merged and without a clear distinction. Because the sun has risen high enough, there isn't the orange or red colours. What occurs instead is an ocean and sky that look like grey pearl. The camera sees more colour than I do: As the sun rises into a cloud, there will be oranges in the image which I barely see. And then the sun is up, and the sunrise picture-taking is completed.
Today's images were taken on the trip down to Florida. These are motion blur pictures - where the car's speed is faster than the camera's shutter speed to give that wonderful sense of movement.
