Everyone has heard the tale that Santa is watching you late at night, and he knows if you're naughty or nice. While this no doubt is a little concerning for any with a nefarious mind, the real question is, how does he do it?
He could have his elves out watching you, but anyone that's played the game of telephone knows there are bound to be mistakes in the telling! Not to mention, relaying information to the big guy would take a massive amount of effort. There would have to be multiple tiers of elves determining what information gets relayed to him, and he would still spend all day hearing about what horrible little children you have all been!
Keeping cameras on everyone would likewise take a lot of man hours. How many elves would he have to employ to watch all those cameras, and report on your bad behavior? What stresses would they have to endure for such a job? Would they hear the cries of children late at night, waking them up? When would they ever have time to make them presents? Would they even want to after enduring such a task?
What I suggest rather is that Santa knows through quantum entanglement! Santa clearly must set up various devices around your house and places that you and other kids go, so he can constantly monitor the naughty children, and know instantly whether they've been naughty or nice, thanks to quantum particles connected to a neural interface, and placed in his brain! That's right, Santa is a cyborg!
From Wikipedia's Quantum entanglement article:
Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated or interact in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the others, even when the particles are separated by a large distance—instead, a quantum state must be described for the system as a whole.
So, basically, these particles are connected together, despite even great distances, reflecting the state of each other. Earlier this year China managed to break the current distance record for communication using quantum entanglement using it's "Micius" satellite in low Earth orbit. We're still trying to figure out how to use quantum communication ourselves, but it is clear that Santa has been using it for many years! Whether he has access to alien technology or some ancient knowledge is not clear. What is clear is that he knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you are awake, he knows when you've been bad or good, and he knows when you stole my cookies!
Direct neural interfaces have been around for years. The first true "Brain Computer Interface" was in 1977 by Jacques Vidal, who coined the term "BCI". The experiment involved using an EEG to allow a subject to move a small sprite through a maze on a computer. (read more at the BCI article on Wikipedia) Every year we seem to be developing more and more advanced interfaces. As this article's title states, Brain-Controlled Prosthetics Are Progressing Faster Than We Could Imagine. According to some, the Brain-Machine Interface Isn't Sci-Fi Anymore.
Santa clearly is doing more than controlling a mouse and keyboard though! He clearly has some sort of auditory interface directly into his brain, allowing him to hear the tantrum cries of thousands of bad little boys and girls across the globe, like some sort to highly advanced Cochlear implant!
He also must have some sort of multi-input neural interface directly into his visual cortex! How else could he know when you are sleeping, and when you are awake? He's got eyes inside his head!
Darpa itself is working on a high resolution neural interface!
You may ask how Santa got all this technology. After all, the legend of Santa goes back all the way to 280 A.D. We're only just now developing this technology ourselves. Could it be some form of ancient technology gifted to St. Nicholas by some long forgotten tomb? I doubt it. Even if he had discovered the technology, it's doubtful that he could have implanted it in himself, without some form of artificial intelligence controlled surgical robot to assist him, and that's clearly just sci-fi. No, he was abducted by aliens! Aliens saw the good deeds that St. Nicholas wrought, and they implanted in him all of their advanced technologies, so he could be an immortal god among men, gifting all the young boys and girls with toys.
The future is now! Aliens have come, and they have given their technology to Santa! He's not gonna put up with you misbehaving! Don't test him little boys and girls! We can't know what other technologies he has implanted in his near immortal bio-mechanical body! So you better be good! You better be nice! Because Santa probably has a laser that could cut you in half with one slice!
Grumpy Santa by Richard Elzey
Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic(source)
#suesascience #science #neurology #quantumcommunication #cyborgs #santa #neuralinterface #brainmachineinterface #quantumentanglement #conspiracytheory #ocd-resteem
This post was made as an entry to Suesa's Science Challenge #3 - A Very Science Christmas.