A quantum theoretical interpretation of Santa Claus: How can Santa, who delivers presents at lightning speed all over the world, avoid burning out and disappearing?

Every year on the evening of December 24th, Santa Claus is said to visit children and give them presents. Phys.org, a science news site, offers a quantum theory explanation for how Santa Claus delivers presents to children all over the world.

How does Santa do it all? Quantum physics, that's how, says scientist
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-santa-quantum-physics-scientist.html

Many parents struggle to hide the true identity of Santa Claus from their young children. The earliest recorded case of a child doubting the existence of Santa Claus is a letter sent to an American newspaper in 1897 by an 8-year-old child who asked, 'Tell me the truth? Is there a Santa Claus?'

There is also a record of a girl calling the U.S. Air Force on December 24, 1955, asking, 'Are you really Santa Claus?' This call prompted the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to track and report on Santa Claus's movements every year.

Official NORAD Tracks Santa
https://www.noradsanta.org/en/

However, even if Santa Claus were real, delivering presents to every child in the world in one night would be an extremely difficult task. In his book 'Silent Night, Hasty Night,' Metin Tran, a physics researcher at the University of Dortmund in Germany, argues that 'even if Santa Claus only delivered presents to Christian children up to the age of 10 who had been well behaved during the year, he would need to visit 234 million households in 24 hours.'

234 million households in 24 hours means Santa Claus would have to visit about 2,700 homes per second. Even if he traveled against the Earth's rotation, the total time limit would be 32 hours, and his delivery quota would be about 2,000 deliveries per second. This far exceeds the maximum frame rate that humans can see, so 'we can't observe Santa Claus working,' says Tran.

If the average gift each child receives weighs 1kg, Santa Claus would have to travel a total distance of approximately 82 million kilometers in a sleigh that weighs well over 200,000 tons. According to Tran, accelerating the sleigh to the required speed would require more than six times the energy consumed in Germany in a year.

Of course, if Santa Claus were to consume that much energy and travel around the world at such high speeds, he would burn up, collapse, and die in an instant. However, Tran argues that by applying quantum theory, particularly the uncertainty principle of energy and time, Santa Claus could survive.

'Santa Claus exists throughout space and must be replaced by a wave state that describes all states,' says Tran. In other words, Santa Claus is not one person, but rather a 'Santa Claus wave' that is a superposition of all states of Santa Claus.

'Santa's individual state is determined by the fact that he has delivered presents to a particular house, so Santa Claus is present in every house simultaneously during his delivery. Quantum mechanics tells us that we can never witness Santa delivering presents,' Tran said.

However, if Santa Claus is sighted, his existence is confirmed at that point, and his vibrational state collapses. 'As long as this Santa Claus wave exists, it means that Santa Claus will survive until the end of the universe. Santa Claus will be traveling for an eternity of 20 x 10 ⁴⁸ years,' Tran said.