First place
Aliens shelling Earth with messages
Caroline Angelo
This simple drawing put together all the elements of a message hurled from afar.
A companion to Cosmic Communications
The ET Might Write
Cartoon Contest
Judged, unreasonably, on physics
Students were invited to draw the central idea of the Nature paper: that a distant civilization would do better to post us a letter than to radio ahead. What nobody warned them was that the judge would evaluate the entries on whether they got the interstellar distances right.
The rubric, apparently: did the drawing convey that the sender is very far away, that the message is inscribed in matter, and that nobody is making a return trip? Artistic merit was noted, and then largely set aside.
The winner
First place
Runners-up
Second and third place
Second & third
Alien throwing the book
Zhen Li and Xiangpeng Jing
These cute animated GIFs illustrated the concept nicely, but not simply. I would also have preferred the astronomer looking in another direction.
Honourable mentions
Close, but the distances
Honourable mention
Three more from the winner
Caroline Angelo
I very much liked the extremely intent E.T., but it did not capture the distance issue as well as the winner. The tourism cartoon was also funny, but implied a return trip by live people — probably a near impossibility, though who really knows. The dropping-book cartoon seemed too local to me.
Artistic favourite
Dark, moody, and adorable
A. Anonymous
This drawing was artistically my favourite.
However, the astronomer is not on Earth, and the alien is on the same planet, asteroid or moon as the astronomer — so it doesn't quite capture the idea of flinging a message across space.
Honourable mention
The paper airplane
Miro Samwil
Really nice, but it had something of the same problem as A. Anonymous' drawing — the alien was too close, a notion reinforced by the paper airplane itself.
Honourable mention
Similar in spirit, better on distance
Jonathan Backhaus
Similar in spirit to Miro's drawing, though it did get the distance involved a little better. The ETs are sending their message from a ship, which negates the energy efficiency of inscribed-matter channels. It's also unclear why the human is saying "Life?" when the airplane has not hit him yet.
Honourable mention
The dropped rock
Dick Frenkiel
Typical cut-to-the-chase-with-humour Dick.
My next-door neighbour at WINLAB, and a National Medal of Technology winner for bringing you cellular and cordless phones while at AT&T. He is a conceptual genius, and about as good an artist as I am. Nonetheless, an expansion on this theme would probably make a hilarious cartoon. His memoir, Cellular Dreams and Cordless Nightmares, is a must-read.