Creator of xkcd Reveals Secret Back-story of His Epic, 3,099-Panel 'Time' Comic

vikingpower writes "Randall Munroe, the comic author best known as the creator of the xkcd webcomic, reveals the secret backstory of his epic, 3099-panel 'Time' strip in an interesting interview with Wired. He says, 'In my comic, our civilization is long gone. Every civilization with written records has existed for less than 5,000 years; it seems optimistic to hope that the current one will last for 10,000 more ... The Earth’s axis wobbles over the millennia, and some individual stars move visibly, so I used a few different pieces of astronomy software–with a lot of hand correction and tweaking–to render the future night sky. When the Sun sets in the night sequence, one of the first things you see is the gap where Antares should be, which was the first clue that this is taking place in the far future. Later in the night–which lasted for several days of real time–more astronomical details let readers pin down the date more precisely.' The comic can be seen as an animation on YouTube. There is also a complete click-through version available on geekwagon. This comic inspired a dedicated wiki and has its own glossary."