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How big is the Discworld Universum?

Do any dimensions appears in the books?

For example, if we extrapolate dimensions of Ankh-Morpork to get Disk radius and based on this calculate size of 4 elephants and turtle.

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    The Wikipedia states that the moon and the sun of Discworld were 1 mile in diameter in earliest books, and were later stated to be 80 miles in diameter each.
    – Gallifreyan
    Commented Aug 18, 2016 at 13:46
  • So in earliest books sun were smaller than Disc. Any quote for this?
    – janisz
    Commented Aug 18, 2016 at 14:18
  • only Wikipedia - I myself have only read Mort and started reading The Colour of Magic.
    – Gallifreyan
    Commented Aug 18, 2016 at 14:22
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    @janisz The sun is always smaller than, and orbiting, the disk.
    – OrangeDog
    Commented Aug 18, 2016 at 15:49
  • @OrangeDog my bad, misinterpreted thousands comma with decimal dot
    – janisz
    Commented Aug 18, 2016 at 15:51

2 Answers 2

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Circumference: 30,000 miles (ish)

"Ten thousands of miles. I just patrol this length.”

“That’s a third of the way around the disc!”

The Colour of Magic

As you can see from this top-down map from the Discworld Mappe Atlas, Great A'Tuin isn't dramatically wider or longer than the Disc's 9,549 mile diameter.

The area of the disk is approx 71,619,724 Miles2 which is slightly bigger than the pacific ocean.

enter image description here

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    That's about 50000 km (ish) in SI units. Imperials...
    – Zommuter
    Commented Aug 18, 2016 at 14:16
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    @zommuter - The discworld books were written in English for a British audience. The fact that the odd colonial may have found a copy or two is no good excuse to be going around converting things for them.
    – Valorum
    Commented Aug 18, 2016 at 15:19
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    In case anyone wonders, translations also convert the units, but not always to SI. French edition has “Seize mille kilomètres. Moi je patrouille seulement sur une lieue". Which translates back to “Sixteen thousand kilometers. I just patrol one league”.
    – spectras
    Commented Aug 18, 2016 at 20:01
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    @Valorum: I don't recall the British empire extending to discworld... also, the people of Albion should get with the program and start using sane units, not the furlongs-per-forthnight or whatever it is you people have :-)
    – einpoklum
    Commented Aug 18, 2016 at 20:02
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    @JeremyP - You should definitely ask that on the main site. I even have an answer ready for you :-) It's slightly too long for a comment, but it comes directly from Mr Pratchett himself.
    – Valorum
    Commented Mar 10, 2017 at 11:31
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Land area calculations for the Discworld continents can be found at Aleph Zero Heroes. The page uses Green's Theorem to calculate the areas of the continents from a contour integral around the edge of the maps (the full map appears on GitHub).

  • Main continent = 27.6 million sq miles
  • XXXX = 1.4 million sq miles
  • (total) islands = 1.3 million sq miles

Compared to the total Discworld area of 78.5 million sq miles. The calculation presumes a 10,000 mile diameter which is a little different from the calculation above, but an often quoted diameter.

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    Could you edit in the relevant evidence from the link for how they come up with these numbers? At the moment if the link dies we are just left to take your word for it that this is correct.
    – TheLethalCarrot ♦
    Commented Jul 30, 2019 at 9:15
  • Is that enough detail -- I could put a lot more, but then it might be a bit unwiedly?
    – Matt
    Commented Aug 1, 2019 at 1:47

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