Former NASA roboticistand internet folk hero Randall Munroe is the artist behind the web comicxkcd, a strip about "romance, sarcasm, math, and language."He is brilliant at what he does. (Genius credentials:this3,099-panel comicand meditation on time.) Several entries in the xkcdarchives tackle science and math, and now, deservedly, Munroe has gottenan asteroid named after him.
From his blog:
Amazing xkcd readers Lewis Hulbert and Jordan Zhu noticed that the International Astronomical Union—the organization in charge of official astronomical naming—was taking suggestions for what to name small Solar System objects. They submitted my name for asteroid (4942) 1987 DU6, and it was subsequently renamed 4942 Munroe.
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.
[xkcd]
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