Randall Patrick Munroe (born October 17, 1984) is an American webcomic author, former NASA roboticist, and the creator of the webcomic http://xkcd.com/. He and the webcomic have developed a cult following, and after leaving NASA he became a professional webcomic artist. He has also started a project called "What if?" where users post questions to the website which are usually absurd and physics/math related, and he answers them using his own knowledge as well as various sources from the web.