Hidden Things in Map of Roshar?

[Psymon]

Half the Heralds are male, half are female.

 

Thank you. That saves me some research time. I have pretty much read everything that Brandon has written (and he is by far my favorite writer), but am somewhat new to the cosmere research. I had noticed things like Hoid world hopping, the 17th Shard members, and some other small things but now I want to know all the little tidbits that go into all of his cosmere books.

[18th Shard]

This math is over my head, but can you take the silver kingdoms map and find out how old it is compared to the modern Roshar map?

[skaa]

Ooh, so I was on the right track, after all! Congrats to Veil and Jensen for thinking of watching that quaternion Julia fractal animation.

From the the povray file used for this animation, the quaternion used was c=(-0.125,-0.256,0.847,0.0895). Who here knows a math person who might be able to explain the significance of that particular value? Would it be possible to generate the same shape from another value? A quick search on Google gave this page that also has a (different) 3D slice of a Julia set of that quaternion (among many others), but the author doesn't explain why he chose those values, so they could just be random for all I know.

The animation was uploaded to Wikipedia back in 2006, so it's possible Brandon (or Peter, or another assistant) stumbled upon the Julia set Wikipedia article the same way we did. But maybe there's a more interesting story behind it.

Hey Peter! Would you mind telling the story of how the Roshar shape was chosen?

Edited May 3, 2014 by skaa

[kari-no-sugata]

For fun, here's a hi-res rendering:

Full size: http://i.imgur.com/1SEtWpw.jpg

I downloaded povray and figured out how to render a larger version from the povray script here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Julia_set_3d_slice_animation.ogg

[woolhead]

Man that looks really, really cool! I wonder if Brandon just used this as a handy way to generate a neat shape for a continent, or if the animation has significance.

 

People have mentioned that it could represent the crem build up that formed Roshar.

 

I wonder if its chaotic nature and the way it balloons out to both sides indicates that we're not seeing deposits from a consistently easterly source, but rather the result of the two colliding storms. Since the Everstorm is described as something new, maybe what we're seeing isn't Roshar's formation pattern but it's destruction (either the second half of the animation, or the first half played backwards). 

[dants]

Has anybody noticed that if you turn the map sideways it looks like an S? Like, Sanderson?

[Shaggai]

Has anybody noticed that if you turn the map sideways it looks like an S? Like, Sanderson?

That's probably a coincidence, since I'm pretty sure Brandon isn't the one who made the animation that the map is based off of.

[dants]

That's probably a coincidence, since I'm pretty sure Brandon isn't the one who made the animation that the map is based off of.

but still, what if Brandon asked them to do it? it counts as a Hidden Thing.

[Shaggai]

but still, what if Brandon asked them to do it? it counts as a Hidden Thing.

I seriously doubt it's that convoluted. The resemblance is minor at best.

[fastlindyrick]

Can someone who has run the POVRAY code confirm that a full 50 iterations were used?  I ask because if you look at the image on the Paul Bourke site (image d in the attachment here), there is a hole in the middle, relative to the comparable frame from the animation (image b ).  I coded it up myself in matlab to get an independent assessment, and the hole is there if more than 12 iterations are run (image f), whereas the image looks right if not enough iterations are run, say 12 or less (image e).  The example in the POVRAY documentation suggests 8 iterations, with 20 as a default...  Youngy, skaaa, and Kari-no-sugata all appear to have downloaded POVRAY so if one of you can confirm this I'd appreciate it.

 

Side note: my images don't match perfectly partly because it was hard to get the perspective to match POVRAY and partly because POVRAY cheats and doesn't check every point, but rather makes a few assumptions and approximations to speed up the computation, but I rotated the images in 3d and the perspective issue doesn't seem to account for the discrepancy.

[kari-no-sugata]

Hi fastlindyrick - I used frame 64 (counting from 0) from the povray file:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Julia_set_3d_slice_animation.ogg

 

I didn't make any changes.

 

Does that help?

 

[fastlindyrick]

Kari-no-sugata,

 

thanks; though that doesn't explain the difference in the POVRAY results relative to Paul Bourke's results, which match mine...

 

-Rick

[Aeonix]

So if i understand correctly, the Julia set is chaotic in contrast to the Fatou set, which is ordered.

 

 

...is there any chance that one of the other landmasses/planets/Shadesmar locations in the Cosmere corresponds to a Fatou set, thus indicating it to be either diametrically opposed or linked to Roshar?

 

 

And just when i thought I'd STOPPED going mad over this problem.

 

I'd think it might look a lot like the shattered plains, before they were shattered, or any one of the ancient cities?

[TenSoon]

Okay, I don't understand most of what is being said here, so I am going to put out a few theories based on my theory of the Julia Set and Roshar. Feel free to poke holes in these theories later.

 

Okay. So you have probably all watched the Julia Set Wikipedia video dozens of times by now, at least if you're anything like me. But I wanted to find out when certain events took place, and what the world looked like at the time. So I downloaded the video and looked at it frame by frame, then compared it to the Silver Epochs and modern day Roshar map. The two maps look virtually identical, which could mean one of two things. Either the land has not changed at all, in which case timelining Roshar through the video becomes virtually useless, or: the Silver Epochs map came from just before the middle of the Julia Set video, and the modern day Roshar video came from just after the middle of the video.

 

If the two maps which look virtually identical came from either side of the video, then this is great news. It means we can timeline the birth and death of Roshar, and find out what Roshar looked like during certain events. So the numbers for the frame count is:

 

Beginning of Video (Beginning of Roshar) : Frame 1

Silver Kindoms Era : Frame 70

Modern Roshar Map : Frame 78

End of video (End of Roshar) : Frame 153

 

Because we don't know exactly when the Silver kingdoms were around, apart from 'sometime when the Knights Radiant existed', and because I couldn't bee bothered doing any hard math, I estimated that the Silver Kingdoms Era was 4,000 years before present day Roshar. In other words, 500 years per frame.

 

If this is true, then we can roughly timeline various events in Roshar's history.

The birth of Roshar (Frame 1 of the video) is 39,000 years before present day Roshar.

The death of Roshar (Frame 153 of video) is 37,500 years after present day Roshar.

 

That doesn't sound very mind blowing until you think about the entire life-span of a continent being less than 80,000 years. If this is true, then there is something seriously wrong with that continent (or how it ends).

 

If this makes absolutely no sense to you, I'll edit it sometime when I'm more in my right mind.

 

Once again, this is all speculation, not confimed fact.

 

LATER

 

Do you think Brandon Sanderson just picked that picture because it looked cool? Could we be over-thinking this?

 

"Emily, those silly 17th Sharders are over-thinking everything again!"

 

"Just RAFO it. They'll all end up with a psychologist if you keep it up long enough."

Edited July 10, 2014 by TenSoon

[Argent]

Pretty sure you are overthinking it. We were told that the "hidden thing" is a small Easter egg with no actualy significance to the world, just something cool. Plus, considering that a good chunk of Brandon's worldbuilding comes from "oh, hey, this is cool, I am going to put it in the Cosmere!" moments, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he stumbled upon the Julia set randomly and thought to use it; or maybe he wanted a world whose shape was founded in geometry, and the Julia set worked nicely.

[Shaggai]

Pretty sure you are overthinking it. We were told that the "hidden thing" is a small Easter egg with no actualy significance to the world, just something cool. Plus, considering that a good chunk of Brandon's worldbuilding comes from "oh, hey, this is cool, I am going to put it in the Cosmere!" moments, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he stumbled upon the Julia set randomly and thought to use it; or maybe he wanted a world whose shape was founded in geometry, and the Julia set worked nicely.

I agree. I can't really imagine that there's an in-universe reason that Roshar is shaped like that specific projection of that specific cross-section of that specific Julia set. It's just at the wrong level of arbitrarity. It's too arbitrary to have an obvious in-world reason. But because it's a frame in an animation on Wikipedia, we know Brandon didn't choose all of those factors, so it isn't arbitrary enough to suspect something.

Edited July 10, 2014 by Shaggai

[TenSoon]

You're probably right. Oh well. (Unless of course, this is true, in which case I knew it all along...)

[Stormwalker]

I don't know if this would be considered necroing, but it seems like there have been worse instances in this thread before, so I'll do it nontheless. I should also note that I haven't read the whole thread, so someone might have already said this.

 

Now my immediate reaction to seeing the map was, like some of you seem to have said, that it sort of looked like a hurricane/storm. However, after thinking about it, and from my knowledge of physics (and I admit I'm not a expert on geology, physics, or weather dynamics), I have no idea why constant storms that move across Roshar would make Roshar look like a storm frozen in place. But lets just assume that I'm wrong and this is the logical effect of the highstorms.

 

My next observation was that the Roshar-storm is moving counter-clockwise, just as hurricanes do on Earth. Except of course that Roshar seems to be in the southern hemisphere (by the location of the frostlands), so the coriolis force should really make the storms rotate the other way around. At least that would be the case if highstorms are cyclones (areas of low pressure) like the tropical storms of Earth. So what if the highstorms rotate counter-clockwise because they are really anti-cyclones (areas of high pressure)?

 

Now, from what I know about weather, anti-cyclones on Earth are usually associated with clear skies, not cataclysmic storms of doom. However, highstorms are also magical, so maybe that doesn't matter. Moreover, I do know of at least one storm that is an anti-cyclone: the great red spot of Jupiter. I once saw a quote where Brandon said he got the idea of the highstorms from the storms on Jupiter. So maybe the easter egg is just that highstorms are sort of like the great red spot (the math part would be the coriolis force calculations?).

[navybrandt]

The Easter egg was solved on page 31 of this thread.

[Stormwalker]

Well, now I look foolish... I actually read page 31, just not page 32 where Peter confirms it.

[navybrandt]

Not foolish at all.  I wasn't trying to be snarky but trying to show you the answer.  I usually don't read every thread in the huge topics either.

[Oudeis]

Hey guys... so, I've read the end where we know that the map is a Julia Set. What I'm missing is the significance. What does a Julia Set tell us? I tried reading the OP and the last few pages but... there's a lot there. I'm sure someone explains it well, but my brain sorta glazes over and the words stop having meaning.

 

Can someone just quickly explain to me the importance of the fact that the map is a Julia Set? From what I can read on Wikipedia, it seems like it means that the continent is a natural growth of crem deposits over millenia.

[Argent]

It's not important. It's trivia.

[Moogle]

A Julia set is a mathematical object, and not one we'd expect to occur in nature naturally. If I were looking for significance from the fact that Roshar is in the shape of a Julia set, I'd guess that means Roshar is artificial and was not made by natural processes. Not surprising, considering the moons are artificial. 

 

Other interesting possibilities are that it's somehow related to the Cryptics, who also appear to be fractals.

 

There's also a possible connection to cymatics, in that the Dawncities all seem to have been formed via cymatics. A julia set can't be created by cymatics, though, as far as I know. Still, overall it makes Roshar seem to place an inordinate amount of importance on frequency/mathematical relations. Stormlight, for example, flickers at a very fast frequency. Highstorms can be mathematically predicted. Even their writing looks like sound waves...

Edited October 24, 2014 by Moogle

[Windrunner]

A Julia set is a mathematical object, and not one we'd expect to occur in nature naturally. If I were looking for significance from the fact that Roshar is in the shape of a Julia set, I'd guess that means Roshar is artificial and was not made by natural processes. Not surprising, considering the moons are artificial. 

When did we get confirmation that the moons are artificial?

 

Also I just figured that it's a cool shape that Brandon thought would make for a fun world map, so he used it and thought it'd be a neat Easter Egg for mathematicians.