Closer to 5000, not 4500

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

I am going to preface this by noting that math is NOT my best subject, which is why I am totally ignoring the existence of leap years. 

I found a WoB on Reddit about years in his various books which lead me to an interesting conclusion. The first important piece of the WoB was confirmation that time in the books follows the measurements of the world in the book. The second is that Roshar's year is about 1.1 Earth years.

So I multiplied 365 by 1.1 and got 401.5. So now I have the Earth days in a Rosharan year (I think). Then I multiplied that by 4500 and got 1,806,750. So I should have the number of Rosharan days in 4500 Rosharan years. Then I divided it by 365 to find out how many Earth years that is and got 4950. Since I can't figure out how to account for leap years I'm going to guess that they would bring the above number even closer to 5000. Provided the above math is correct that is.

I'm not sure if this is important or not, but is interesting. At any rate, Rosharan days must be shorter than Earth days as they have 500 days for about every 400 of ours.

[Eki]

Yep. You only needed to do 4500*1.1 = 4950 though.

Not sure if we know if leap years are a thing in the Cosmere.

And yeah, Rosharan days are shorter. I think the Coppermind might have the actual calculations.

I think the most interesting implication of this is that all the characters are actually slightly older than we would normally think.

Edited October 5, 2016 by Eki

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

The leap year has to do with calculating the Earth years. Since an Earth year is actually 365. 24..... etc. 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

I don't actually know for sure, but I vaguely remember something about 20 hour days at some point.

20 hrs * 500 days = 10,000 hours
10,000 / 24 = 416.66 days
416.66 / 365.24 (leap/etc) = 1.1408 Earth years. It still rounds to ~1.1, so perhaps it is correct?

[king of nowhere]

yes. a roshar day is exactly 20 hours, which are equal to earth hours, and a year is exactly 500 days. no leap years, which are added because on earth the duration of the year is not an exact multiple of the day duration. the duration of the day on roshar is such a round number because the planet was built, rather than formed naturally.

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

I know there are no leap years on Roshar. I can't figure out how to calculate for Earth leap years.

[Darkness he/him]

just use 365.25 days/year to account for Earth leap years.

From what I see: we have 365.25 * 24 = 8,766 hours per Earth year.

They have 500 * 20 = 10,000 hours per Rosharan year.

This is, as TheOneWhoConnects figured, a factor of 1.1408.

For example of a character's 'Earth-age': Jasnah was born in 1139, current time of her travelling to the Shattered Plains is 1173. This makes her either 33 or 34 Rosharan years old, depending on whether she's had her birthday in 1173 or not. Regardless, on her 34th Rosharan birthday, she would be approximately 38.8 Earth years old. So it's not an extremely drastic change, but someone that the book says is 90 would actually be around 103, so it does scale up the older you get. Like if someday in SA Hoid says that he's 6000 Rosharan years old, he'd be 6845 earth years old.

Of course, if he doesn't specifiy 'Rosharan', he could mean 'Yolen', which could mean anything.

[WeiryWriter he/him]

The conversion is just 1.1 as far as we know, I'm pretty sure Brandon has said that their hours aren't the same length as ours either.

[Darkness he/him]

That's completely reasonable, since our 'hours' are a structure that was contrived to conveniently break one day into equivalent segments. Minutes and seconds are the same. Really, if we want a more accurate comparison we should look at things in terms of nuclear decay rates. Of course, even if the atomic structure is organized in the same way, investiture might mess with that too haha.

So ya, 1.1 seems like the safest scale to use.

[JUQ he/him]

So I did some of the calcs in Word because the equation editor is WAY easier to understand than stuff like 45*12/43^(48+89/24) etc.

I dunno if there's anything else I forgot to calculate, tell me if there is.

Also, I found a WoB that Roshar is lighter than Earth - 70%, and it is high oxygen.

Edited October 7, 2016 by The True Survivor

[Jondesu he/him]

On 10/6/2016 at 7:08 PM, The True Survivor said:

So I did some of the calcs in Word because the equation editor is WAY easier to understand than stuff like 45*12/43^(48+89/24) etc.

I dunno if there's anything else I forgot to calculate, tell me if there is.

I think the only missing detail that probably makes everything match up to the 1.1 Brandon has said, would be the difference in the length of a Rosharan hour, as @WeiryWriter said.

Edited October 14, 2016 by Jondesu

[JUQ he/him]

13 hours ago, Jondesu said:

I think the only missing detail that probably makes everything match up to the 1.1 Brandon has said, would be the difference in the length of a Rosharan hour, as @WeiryWriter said.

I calculated the length of the Rosharan hour

[Jondesu he/him]

12 hours ago, JUQ said:

I calculated the length of the Rosharan hour

Oops, yes, you did, I just misunderstood some of all that.  NM, then.