Scientist: Higgs boson, relativity may explain how Santa does his job

Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and the Higgs boson, the subatomic particle discovered by British scientist Peter Higgs, could “throw some light” on Santa Claus’s amazing ability to deliver countless gifts to different parts of the world on the night before Christmas, scientific researcher Gerardo Herrera Corral said in an article published by a Mexican journal.

“Santa could apply the principles of the theory of relativity,” which postulates the possible existence of black wormholes connecting different parts of space/time, the scientist said.

“Through them, old St. Nick could travel to widely separated places in the wink of an eye to deliver Christmas presents” to good little girls and boys everywhere, the expert, a member of the Physics Department at Research and Advanced Studies Center, or Cinvestav, at the National Polytechnic Institute, or IPN, said in a playful article for a scientific journal.

Santa Claus could not only switch instantly to different parts of the planet, but could stop time “while climbing down the chimney or entering houses through doors or windows to leave his gifts, because one property of wormholes is that upon entering them, time stands still,” Herrera Corral said.

But for St. Nicholas to find the wormhole useful, it would require a somewhat unrealistic amount of negative energy, equivalent to the size of a large planet concentrated into a small volume, which would enable Santa to take advantage of new discoveries in the field of highenergy physics.

The recently observed Higgs boson, the smallest possible excitation of a quantum field whose energy in its lowest state is negative, offers Santa a real possibility of moving between widely separated places in a flash.

“Some of us think the Higgs boson could explain the December mystery of Santa Claus and could clear up the ageold question: How is it possible for just one person to deliver millions of toys in a single night?” Herrera Corral said.