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Here on earth, the year is measured by how long it takes our planet to make one trip around the sun. On Roshar, the year is measured by the Highstorm cycle; 1000 days of 10 10-week months. This would imply that the characters in the Stormlight Archive are older than we might assume given the number of years they've lived. Let's take Shallan for example: In WoR, she says she's 17 years old, meaning she's been alive for roughly 17,000 days. If we were to convert that into earth time, that would mean that Shallan is about 46 earth-years old.

This is a question leading out of an idle observation that I had during this interminable waiting period between Books 2 and 3. I don't know if it was already answered by a WoB, so I ask someone who knows to kindly illuminate me. We know that Roshar's calendar year consists of 5-day weeks, 10-week months, and 10-month years, totalling to a 500 day year. This is obviously a significantly longer year than we have on Earth (365 days), yet all of SA's characters identify themselves as "X-years old." However, a SA character's corresponding age on Earth would be significantly higher. (I calculated each character's corresponding Earth age thusly: (Stated age of a character x 500 days) ÷ 365 = character's age in Earth-years Kaladin, by the end of WoR, is 20 on Roshar. In Earth years that's 27. Shallan is 17 on Roshar. 23 on Earth. Adolin is 23 and Renarin is 19 on Roshar. 31 and 26 on Earth. Sadeas and Dalinar are around the same age, which Sadeas reveals is 50. In Earth years, that's 68. From the descriptions of the characters in the books, it seems clear that Brandon wants us to picture the characters as their given ages rather than their Earth-equivalents, meaning that despite a 500 day year characters' ages and development closely correspond to an Earth equivalent. Does this mean that the planet Roshar has an approximately 1.4 times faster rotation on its axis than Earth? Are its days not 24 hours? Could it have something to do with the lighter gravity on the planet? Any thoughts are appreciated!