Chronology and Time Passing

[Raffaine]

This is more of a question than a theory, but despite the appaling amount of world building marvels we have seeing on Cosmere books I haven't seen much of a discussion on the experience people have with time, especially world hoppers and shard vessels.

The origin of the question is the fact that an Earth day is a chunk of time related with the sun positioning in our sky (human perspective) and the rotation of earth around itself (cosmologic perspective). Same goes for the year, which is the cycle of seasons (humans) and the rotation around the sun (cosmos). So, given these facts, we know that time passing is very dependent on where you are, if we one day go to Mars and establish there, we will need to rethink how we track time there, because days and years are different (not sure if shorter or longer) and how do we sync human history after that? We may use the Earth calendar as our Interspatial standard, but that only works because Mars is close by. But Cosmere? Planets are supposed to be in different solar systems, so, not easy to sync up history. What about time passing in the Cognitive Realm?

I know that days and years inside a single world is not very relevant, since it shapes the experience of those there, but I get completely lost when we add the Bigger Scheme of Shards and Adonalsium. Rayse (Odium) "killed" a few of the Shard Vessels out there in what was a millenia in Roshar but how long that would be in Sel? Scadrial?

Anyway ... 

[Weltall]

We know how to convert Rosharan time to Scadrian time (which is identical to Earth) so we can figure out how those worlds relate pretty easily, and we know a little bit about time on Nalthis. All dates mentioned in the books use the local measurements while Brandon generally thinks in Earth terms and then goes to Peter to run the numbers. Similarly, anything Brandon mentions about the big picture can be assumed to work in Earth years, so when he talks about the Cosmere currently having a span of about ten thousand years (with about a thousand years worth of events we've 'seen') we can use that to help refine our own big picture and how much time has passed between White Sand and Sixth of the Dusk, for example.

Edited May 3, 2018 by Weltall

[EddyJ he/him]

On a related tangent, does relativity affect time in the Cosmere? Does time run faster on Roshar because gravity is weaker than normal?

[Raffaine]

Interesting and I would think taht Sanderson wouldn't be picky with this as it can spin out of control pretty easily. But, I still don't think that it is all sorted out and that the differences don't matter. I like the idea of a relativistic effect of sorts and how this would play with Investiture. Also, Wax and Wayne stories are fairly after the Final Empire ... but Roshar? Everything there is millenia+ ... how long have humans be there?

Also ... in-world time tracking may be subject to misinformation and contextual differences. History tells us that we sucked at keep tracking of past events for a long time, we lost much information when it was passed from generation to generation.

The seasons on Earth and the stars are usually good ways of tracking year passing (day passing is trivial) even thou imprecisely, it's easy to correct discrepancies. But this takes time to understand. Of course, the influence of the divine is quite obvious on the Cosmere, which may have given humans on Shardworlds a good way of starting.

Edited May 3, 2018 by Raffaine

[Weltall]

48 minutes ago, EddyJ said:

On a related tangent, does relativity affect time in the Cosmere? Does time run faster on Roshar because gravity is weaker than normal?

The difference due to gravity and planetary speed is really small, but it would be a factor. Still, we're talking maybe a couple of minutes difference over thousands of years, so within the lifetime of a normal human the difference will be negligible and even for someone like Hoid, pretty much a non-issue. It's probably not something Brandon will pester Peter about since it's unlikely that such a small difference will ever affect the story.

Now, once you start talking about traveling at relativistic speeds, then it becomes very important. But we're way off before we're likely to see how that applies.

22 minutes ago, Raffaine said:

Interesting and I would think taht Sanderson wouldn't be picky with this as it can spin out of control pretty easily. But, I still don't think that it is all sorted out and that the differences don't matter. I like the idea of a relativistic effect of sorts and how this would play with Investiture.

This is what Peter is for. Brandon thinks in real-world terms and then goes to him to make sure that the numbers all work out. They've got all sorts of conversions set up somewhere that they can refer to, and they're working out others like an exchange rate of Investiture between Breath and Stormlight, for when that starts to become significant.

Oh, and it's probably worth mentioning that Brandon has been asked about Investiture and speed bubbles and pointed out that yes, an outside observer would notice stormlight leaking from a gemstone at a faster or slower rate if one were housed inside a bendalloy or cadmium bubble and they would observe a similar effect if an infused gem were located near a singularity.

Quote

Also, Wax and Wayne stories are fairly after the Final Empire ... but Roshar? Everything there is millenia+ ... how long have humans be there?

We don't have exact dates but given that Brandon told us about there being roughly ten thousand years since 'inciting events' (ie the Shattering of Adonalsium) and how much time has passed between Aharietiam and Way of Kings (just shy of five thousand Earth years) we can make a rough stab at it. But there's some material from Oathbringer involved in the latest timeline guesstimates and I'm not sure if you've read that yet, and I'd have to spoil-tag it anyways.

[Leyrann]

On a semi-related note, a Mars day is about 25 Earth hours and is called a Sol, and is used for timekeeping with Mars rovers and the like. A Mars year, if I remember correctly, is about 475 Earth days, meaning about 460 (?) Mars days.

Edit: Already got 2 reputation so I'm kind of starting to feel guilty for giving off-the-top-of-my-head numbers, here's the more accurate numbers:

Mars day is about 24 hours and 39 minutes (and 35 seconds) on Earth. Mars days are divided into 24 Mars hours that are slightly longer than Earth hours.

And good thing I checked now, because otherwise you'd believe incorrect information about the Mars year, as I was significantly off: A Mars year is about 687 Earth days, or 668 Sols.

Edited May 5, 2018 by Leyrann