My admiration for Carl and his influence on SETI drove me to illustrate this quick sketch of the antenna arrays which persistently seek transmissions from beyond interstellar space.

This picture represents my interpretation of again, our feeble attempts to communicate with the cosmos based on our seemingly advanced technology. I say "seemingly' because the equipment and technology we are applying to this type of cosmic reach may be viewed as ancient and adolescent within the next 30 to 100 years or less.

The ocean and quote by Carl explains itself :)

Rich (sagansense.tumblr.com)

It's difficult to encapsulate one artistic depiction of the exploration of the cosmos. This happens to be one of my favorites, which I was just briefly attempting to sketch in order to come up with a concept I felt comfortable enough translating over to canvas or some larger space.

The astronaut in the picture represents mankind, the fishing pole with Hubble on the end - our feeble attempt to communicate across the cosmos with present day "advancements" in space technology. The bottles represent individual universes and the ocean - space and time across vast distances still unknown to us.

You can find more spacey goodness on my Carl Sagan-inspired blog on tumblr via the link below.

http://sagansense.tumblr.com

Ad Astra Per Aspera.

Rich

Congratulations to Matt Gluf and all great entries to one of the most important questions. Keep spreading the Good Word. Here is a mirror combo of the Milky Way galaxy. It looks like a life form, as if to provide yet another pointer to the Truth. We are not alone!

Grant

I've been painting these nests and then this happened. Seemed apropos fo your subject.

Susan

This reworked photo is inspired by the experience of watching a friend give birth. I was knocked for a loop by the spiritual surprise. One minute there were four people in the room and the next minute there were five people in the room, but nobody came in through the door. It was magic! The baby came through THE door, the worm hole that connects all humans to all other life everywhere. We all have the mark. We are never alone.

Sara

Just one more... Sorry, I just keep finding new arrangements and I don't want to keep them to myself. In this symmetry of frog pigment, the face looks more cat-like. I've gotten better at rendering many stars and the depth of space. The stars come from Epcot's Spaceship Earth (the giant golf ball). Same answer to the question - Cosmic Brain!

Grant

One more, this time using a snowflake over Sirius for the brain, symmetrical frog pigment that looks like a face, and background of lighted snow for stars and nebula streaming out of the cosmic brain. I know the contest ended Sunday, but I keep finding new arrangements that I want to share on the coolest website around!

Grant

The final revision of Cosmic Brain using a background of light reflected off snow, providing a more obvious water element that also looks like stars and nebula. Check out with 3D glasses.

Grant

Stargazing, from the Friendly Giant Series by Adam S Doyle

Adam

Into the eyes of the great unknown.

Andy

"The Young Astronomer"
This is an alien kid who watches lots of science fiction movies and likes to pretend he's an astronomer in his spare time. He thinks he has just discovered a new planet (a strange blue and green one), and wonders if their could be life there...

Patrick

Different Worlds in the Galaxies.

Rhoze

It is highly unlikely for there to be only one of anything including one living planet. I wanted to illustrate this point with everyday subjects.

Danté

On earth, there is a similar morphology for the limbs of land animals from amphibians on up to mammals. What if on other planets environmental pressure allowed for different limb arrangements? This hairless mammal like critter from another planet has limbs that are good for catching prey in it's nut-cracker like "legs" and "arms". Once immobilized it then feeds on their gooey insides with a mosquito like proboscis. It would be fast too, with a springy leap-frog type run.

Adrian

We're not alone, but we may die long before we could ever find out.

"Memento Mori" was the result of making an illustration for a short story fragment I wrote about alien archaeologists exploring the remnants of humanity, gone extinct through collapse.

John

Hard to imagine us all alone in the universe. If aliens do exist, do they have a sense of humor?

And if so… are there alien comedians?

Donna

The title is Star 54 Where Are You?
My painting is about life being spread throughout the universe in a number of ways. Microbial life is very, very likely to be common over space and time. Microbes make good space travelers and could actually have been the mechanism used by an ancient intelligent life form that wanted to propagate life throughout the universe. Most likely the microbes have been spread as a result of explosive events between planetary bodies and asteroid sized objects. DNA may very well be the lingua franca of life in the universe. Perhaps we should be examining meteorites for traces of DNA as well the as living microbial life for which we are already looking. If there are or have been intelligent beings similar to humans, they are likely to be asking the same kinds of questions as we do and are actively searching for signs of life from the four corners of the universe. One big question is whether any of them are contemporaries of ours. The other question is whether most intelligent life forms have an interest in asking questions like humans. Perhaps most are more like the whales and apes that are our own fellow intelligences on planet Earth.

Ron

In the end we are all alone. Abstract art of a single tree surrounded by darkness and a void of emptiness.

Stephen

The cosmic egg: a speck of dust from the big bang containing a vast cosmology of new life, an unexpected child somewhere, safe, until it's own expansion breaks the shell and flings its galaxies into the infinite. Is the edge of the universe just the wall of the shell?

diane

The images from the Mars rover Curiosity have a certain mystery, coupled with a sense of optimism for finding evidence of signs of intelligent life on Mars. This image is an attempt to create an image with a Mars-rover-like sensibility paired with evidence of intelligent activity. This image reminds me of hieroglyphics and in both making this image and viewing it I get the sense that in this vast universe there may be some other intelligent life form. Maybe this is their way of communicating. One day the Mars rover may just send back images like this, with strange but meaningful markings that could prove that we are in fact not alone in this universe.

Adam