![](https://www.popsci.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/18/67FO36PXGCZSHQVPRPT3DSOKNI.png?quality=85&w=525)
![](https://www.popsci.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/18/67FO36PXGCZSHQVPRPT3DSOKNI.png?quality=85&w=525)
![](https://www.popsci.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/18/OUIHFRURC2RQMS6PRRZGSDVCZM.png?strip=all&quality=85)
Former NASA roboticist and internet folk hero Randall Munroe is the artist behind the web comic xkcd, a strip about “romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” He is brilliant at what he does. (Genius credentials: this 3,099-panel comic and meditation on time.) Several entries in the xkcd archives tackle science and math, and now, deservedly, Munroe has gotten an asteroid named after him.
From his blog:
Munroe calculated the size of his namesake (because that is what he does), and puts it at about 6 to 10 kilometers in diameter, comparable to the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs. Right now, though, it’s orbiting harmlessly between Mars and Jupiter.