by Gregory Mone
All of this technological backup isn’t always necessary; most of Santa’s drop-offs proceed smoothly. (That’s why they call it backup.) And that’s really the point of his extensive surveillance network. It allows Santa to focus on his real work: delivering gifts.
PART VII
Delivery
30
How Santa Knows What You Want
TERAHERTZ-BAND RADIATION SCANNING AND THE PROCESS OF ELIMINATION
After Santa slips into a room, he settles down in front of the tree and determines which present or presents to deposit beneath the glowing, multicolored lights. This isn’t a guess or a decision made on a whim. But it’s not precalculated, either.
As we’ve detailed, he has tremendous surveillance capabilities. In the absence of an official, written list sent via mail to the North Pole, Santa could certainly tap into phone calls, e-mails, even certain schoolyard conversations to figure out which toys a child wants. Yet this information wouldn’t really do Santa much good. The important thing here is not simply what the kid wants, but which presents their parents neglect or fail to provide for them. As any sane adult understands, Santa does not give us all of our Christmas gifts. He only leaves those which our parents could not afford or simply forgot to provide. So, if Mom and Dad give us nine of the ten presents, Santa has to be sure that he drops off that missing tenth gift. He can’t just pick anything off the list because he’ll risk doubling up and leaving a little kid two of the same American Girl doll, for example.
One way to avoid such a potentially devastating Christmas-morning scenario—one that could provoke an argument between husband and wife over who was so ignorant as to purchase that extra doll, an argument that could very well bring other marital issues to the fore and spark a massive fight, ruining Christmas and possibly the next few decades of life for the innocent kids—would be to monitor credit-card transactions and implement a software program that can cross-reference the itemized receipts with the child’s wish list. That way, Santa would be able to see which gifts Mom or Dad purchased and which ones were left off. The problem here is that parents are forgetful. Presents are sometimes purchased months in advance, stashed deep in the attic or some hidden nook in the garage, and then completely forgotten about. A longed-for GI Joe might be left in a box, which can lead to the intended recipient feeling broken with disappointment on Christmas morning, not that this author has any experience with such things. The point here is that the purchase of a gift does not necessarily guarantee that it will end up under the tree. This system simply isn’t viable.
Santa needs a more direct way of assessing a given child’s haul. He needs to rapidly and accurately determine what is inside each wrapped box and figure out which additional presents to leave based on that information. Basically, he needs a T-ray scanner.
T-rays, or terahertz radiation waves, sit between micro wave and infrared on the electromagnetic spectrum. Microwaves are longer, infrared shorter. Both of these are fairly common in our everyday lives. We use micro waves to reheat leftovers, and infrared radiation, among other things, allows us to stay seated as we flip through cable channels. So, if these two are so popular, why isn’t anyone using the band of light that sits between them? Is terahertz radiation the electromagnetic spectrum’s version of the middle child, forgotten and ignored? Perhaps, but the psychology of radiation research is not our concern here. The primary reason that terahertz radiation has been so underutilized is that it’s difficult to generate.
Today’s most promising terahertz source, according to senior scientist Jason Dickinson of the University of Massachusetts–Lowell, is the quantum-cascade laser, or QCL. Dickinson says the QCL is the equivalent of a laser pointer for T-rays. But for it to work, it needs to be cooled down to just four degrees above absolute zero. This makes the technology quite a bit more complicated than a handheld laser pointer.
But there’s still a tremendous interest in the field. “Companies and governments are looking for better ways to perform discreet security-type inspections, especially at airports,” Dickinson says. Terahertz waves are ideal because they lack the energy of X-rays and are thus far less harmful to cells. You can repeatedly blast someone with T-rays, and you won’t have to worry about kick-starting cancer. They can also pass through a range of materials, including plastics, clothing, and more. The two things that do stop them are water and metal, which is a benefit when you’re looking for hidden weapons. If someone harboring a gun were to walk through a T-ray scanner at the airport, the radiation would shine right through his clothes, then bounce back once it ran into the metal gun or the water-filled tissues in his body. A terahertz-based device could also detect a range of other substances, including bomb-making materials, by detecting the unique radiation signals of the components.
Santa’s device is portable, battery operated, and delightfully user-friendly. He carries it in the sack thrown over his shoulder and removes it once he settles into a given living room. Time is critical for Santa, so the device has to work fast. Modern T-ray technology would not suffice; you might be able to use it to compile a full-body scan of a person, for example, but it would probably take at least a few minutes. Even if Santa had to focus his scanner on a single item for two seconds, that means it would take him a full minute or more to register all the presents in the home of a medium-sized, upper-middle-class family.
His T-ray system works much faster; typically he scans the room once, in about three seconds, and then waves the device back over the same area for another two seconds. The device both pumps out and receives the radiation. The different materials in the wrapped gifts—papers, plastics, cardboard, etc.—either transmit the T-rays, allowing them to pass straight through; absorb them; or kick them back toward the device. Santa’s scanner receives that reflected radiation, then wirelessly transmits the raw data back to the North Pole’s server farm.
Next, Santa’s computers run that information through a toy ID program. Given the radiation data, the program computes the precise size and shape of a given toy. It also breaks down its molecular composition, since the materials inside all have specific spectral signatures. The toy ID program compares all of this information with the prerecorded shapes and material compositions of all known toys and dolls and gifts. It effectively runs a search, looking for popular toys with the same physical characteristics, and computes a match.
Dickinson guesses that the system probably isn’t perfect, since a terahertz-based gift identifier would have difficulty distinguishing a toy packed inside a cardboard box. It would be far more successful with trucks or dolls that have plastic covers and cardboard backing. Yet given Santa’s sterling reputation for knowing what kids want, it must be that his toy ID program and scanning device make use of some technological shortcuts around these obstacles.
Once the system identifies each of the gifts scanned, it cross-references this information with the child’s wish list to see which items are missing and, finally, routes the data back to Santa. Seconds after he scans the presents, the heads-up display in his reading glasses returns a report. Looking through his spectacles, he sees which toy or toys he’s supposed to leave. And this is where Santa’s tech gets truly interesting.
31
What Really Happened at Tunguska
WHY A SUPPOSED METEORITE EXPLOSION IS REALLY SANTA’S FAULT
On June 30, 1908, a massive explosion occurred in a remote forest in Siberia. An estimated eighty million trees were knocked down, covering an area of more than eight hundred square miles. No direct eyewitness accounts of the explosion were recorded, but plenty of people testified to its effects. There were changes in the sky as far away as England, and several hundred miles from the blast site, locals reported being thrown to the ground by the shock wave. The air became incredibly bright and hot. Trees caught fire. Buildings shook, and several people compared the sounds they heard to artillery fire.
Scientists and conspiracy theorists have been debating what happened at that remote spot in Siberi
a, called Tunguska, ever since. The theories range from the explosion of a meteorite fragment a few miles above the ground (plausible) to a collision of a large chunk of invisible, exotic dark matter with the Earth’s surface (not so plausible). No one has considered that Santa might have been involved.
The aliens provided Santa with a set of very easy-to-read operations manuals that spell out how to use each of his many technologically advanced toys. They also told him to read them only in case of emergency, since they designed everything to be very simple to operate, knowing that the OC was technologically clueless. But at one point he got a little too confident. Like any prolific gadget user, he decided to ignore the manual and determine how to work a device, and what to use it for, on his own. This yielded disastrous results.
The tool he chose to test was called a replicator. It released thousands of micromachines that acted in concert, according to a central directive. Santa thought it might be an alternative means of manufacturing toys, particularly wooden trains. (They were still popular in 1908.) The device had a simple user interface: All he had to do was hold up the item he wished to have copied and rotate it in front of a built-in scanner. Next, he figured he’d just press the green button tagged “GO” and watch the gadget work. The technology, he decided, would be perfect: easy to use and portable, too. He was thinking he could keep it in the sleigh and create toys out of the firewood stacked in so many family backyards. Then he could just leave the toys where they were. His intentions were noble; he thought it would be fun for kids if gifts turned up in unexpected places.
Santa’s assessment of his own technological abilities was severely misguided at the time, so when Mrs. Claus learned of his plan, she insisted that he first test it at a remote location. This in itself wasn’t unreasonable. Travel was no issue for Santa. His warp-drive sleigh could carry him to Antarctica in the same time it would take him to walk across his bedroom to the toilet.
He chose that remote spot in Siberia, set the device on the dirt in the middle of a thick grove of trees, and pressed GO. The replicator immediately released a swarm of thousands of micromachines, each just a fraction of the size of a potato bug. They surrounded the nearest tree, and its base quickly became a cloud of sawdust. Seconds later, as the thin wood chips settled, an exact replica of the toy caboose Santa wanted to copy lay on the floor. He was ecstatic. He was so proud of himself, in fact, that he decided to sit back and enjoy a pipe, an activity that Mrs. Claus had already barred at the North Pole.
Soon, though, he realized something wasn’t quite right. The micromachines weren’t stopping. They moved in a circular pattern from tree to tree, transforming a chunk of wood at the base of each one into a toy caboose and causing the trees to topple. Before Santa could even think to act, the machines had felled thousands of trees. And they only seemed to be moving faster. Soon it was as if a massive explosion had taken place. In a panic, he dropped his pipe, and the discarded bits of branch and wood all around him caught fire. His warp-drive sleigh exploded, producing that tremendous shock wave.
Eventually he grabbed a large stone and began smashing the micromachines, one by one, until there wasn’t a single one left. By the time he was finished, more than eight hundred square miles of the forest had been swallowed and burned, and Santa was forced to walk around picking up the freshly carved wooden cabooses that hadn’t been incinerated.
The device was now useless, given that he had flattened all the micromanufacturers. Worse yet, when he lifted it, along with all the new toys, into his sack for the long walk him home, he saw a red button on the back that read “STOP.”
Santa, naturally, has not come forward as the true culprit behind the Tunguska event. In fact, he has moved beyond this incident and all but erased it from his memory. Indeed, he has replaced many of his organs since then; in a ship-of-Theseus sort of way, the current Santa isn’t even really responsible. The whole thing was a mistake. The truth is that he didn’t need the device in the first place. He didn’t need to worry about making gifts, whether they were trains, dolls, or complex, many-colored Transformers.
His toys manufacture themselves.
32
Toys That Build Themselves
ON-DEMAND MANUFACTURING VIA DIRECTED SELF-ASSEMBLY
Santa couldn’t lug around finished toys. That just wouldn’t make sense. Even the largest bag would only be able to hold twenty to twenty-five items. And because of the fact that he never knows which toys he’s going to leave until he aims that scanner at the presents under the tree and determines which gifts the child has already received from their parents, he would need to haul nearly all of his options into every house. If little Cindy Cornue on Beach Road in Tequesta, Florida, has seven toys on her wish list, Santa would have to bring all seven. Now imagine that Santa determines he should leave toy number 3. That’s fine, but if he then heads to the next house and learns that Shawnie Cox should also be given toy number 3, he would either have to head back to the North Pole, bust into a local toy store, grab the item, and leave an IOU (a serious violation of his public relations credo), or carry doubles of everything. Regardless, this method wouldn’t be very smart. In some cases he might only cover two or three homes before needing to restock.
We also know that the elves do not actually make the toys, and that Santa doesn’t buy them wholesale, or even at a discounted rate. Either way, this would be far too expensive. Even if the major toy manufacturers were kind enough to sell Santa the toys at 20 percent of the suggested retail price, the total could run to several billion dollars. That’s not even taking into account the transportation costs, whether he were to have the items shipped to the North Pole or dispersed among regional distribution centers across the world. Santa has money, but not that much.
For the most part—possible exceptions will be addressed in the next chapter—the toys and dolls and other items Santa leaves assemble themselves. (And no, they’re not robots or anything like that. They’re not going to suddenly morph from Barbie dolls into killer machines that threaten to take over your house if you don’t give them remote control rights. Which, by the way, you should never do, because, being humanoids, they will probably only want to watch reruns of the 1980s sitcom Small Wonder.) Self-assembly is actually very common, and Santa’s isn’t the only operation that finds it useful.
Some experts think it will be the manufacturing technique of the future, and several accomplished researchers are making major strides with it today. The renowned Harvard chemist George Whitesides has highlighted the potential of self-assembly by pointing to nature. From the life-sustaining machines in the cell to massive galaxies, nature is filled with living and inorganic structures that build themselves. Nobody watches over these growth or formation processes, ushering them along. A program kicks into gear, whether it’s written in DNA or astrophysical constants, and cells, galaxies, trees, plants, and animals emerge.
Chemists, biologists, and materials scientists have been working with self-assembling molecules for years, but now researchers are also trying to use the approach to build larger, more complex structures. One of the driving forces behind the research is the fact that the components that lie at the heart of those wonderful gadgets we so often take for granted are constantly shrinking. Babak Parviz, an electrical engineer at the University of Washington, says that a typical microprocessor has more than five hundred million parts crammed into a space of less than one square inch. These parts are roughly a thousand times thinner than a strand of hair.
And that’s just the situation today. These pieces will continue to shrink, and they’ll also become more complex. Future microprocessors could include not just electrical components, but biological and chemical pieces, too. As a result, they will become increasingly difficult to manufacture. Today’s conventional manufacturing techniques, Parviz says, will not be able to handle this level of complexity.
Yet nature does far more difficult work all the time, governing the construction of systems with trillions of components. Theref
ore, Parviz and others are trying to emulate nature. They want to grow machines.
Among other things, Parviz and his group have already produced high-performance circuits made of semiconductors—the fundamental building blocks of modern electronics—through self-assembly. Okay, so this isn’t quite a PC or an iPhone, but it’s a step forward, and the work is starting to teach them what it will take to get more complex man-made components or devices to slap themselves together. First, you need to pick out the building blocks, the pieces that are actually going to join to form the finished product. Then you need to figure out how to link them up in the right way and in the correct places. Finally, you have to decide how the whole process is going to be governed. What physical forces or laws will help you progress toward that finished product?
In one experiment, Parviz and his group wanted to embed a number of LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, in a plastic contact lens. They added very tiny wires to a plastic lens and also included, at different points along those wires, round depressions in the surface that matched the size and shape of the circular LEDs. After some prep work, the lens was placed in solution, and a group of LEDs was left to repeatedly drift through the fluid over the surface. The LEDs fell into the circular depressions, and the lens was removed when each hole was filled. (In other words, they waited until the round lights fell into the round holes.) Next they heated the lens, and the LEDs bonded to the surface. The result was an LED-equipped contact lens that had partially assembled itself.
Not to insult Parviz and his contemporaries, but Santa’s equipment is far more advanced and hews much closer to the efficiency of mother nature’s technique. The major upgrade, and a necessary one at that, is speed. Trees do build themselves, but it takes them a long time. Santa wouldn’t be able to wait months or years for a present to put itself together; he needs his toys to assemble in a few hours or less.