I'm not sure my college "supports" Linux, as I'm not sure exactly what you consider supporting to entail, but my departments (astronomy and physics) only have linux computers in their computer labs (with the addition of one or two windows boxes. All of the personal computers and laptops owned by faculty and staff are Linux or Mac). Of course, the IT guys are incredibly lazy and it's still Fedora Core 1.0, but it works most of the time. If you're talking about software and hardware help, I wouldn't even trust the University with a windows computer-they are notorious for breaking things and voiding warranties, and most of the people working at campus computing services don't know what they're doing or even care.
I myself am debating this question for my next laptop. I do a lot of image processing on astronomical images, so having that dark definition that glossy gives is nice. However, glossy tends to saturate more easily and has a worse greyscale response, which means that the display of the relative brightness of things is skewed--it kind of ruins the data. If only there were something in between...
You, of course, are making the assumption that there is intelligent extraterrestrial life outside our solar system, a claim which is supported by NO physical evidence. On the other hand, astronomers know that something large is there. Models of star formation predict that planets will form naturally when stars form. I'm going to go ahead and apply Ocham's razor here:
1)Large mass perturbing/blocking light from star
2)Good reason to think that it's a planet
3)No reason to think that an alien civilization even exists, much less has the capability, inclination, or materials to make GIANT space stations about the size of neptune.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this one's a planet.
Here's your answer:
They can't actually see the planet itself, nobody's been able to directly image a planet in another solar system yet (this is something I hope to be working on in the next few years). What they can see in the case of Gliese 436 is that the light coming from the star "dips" in intensity a little on a regular basis. This is caused by the 'transit' of Gliese 436b, a neptune mass planet. Basically the planet blocks some light from the star and that is what we actually detect.
Also with this system, we've done radial velocity measurements, which involves taking very accurate spectra of the star and watching how the spectral lines move (redshifted or blueshifted). This star, once the fit for the massive, known planet is taken out , still shows a consistent ~1 m/s/year radial velocity signal, which corresponds to a planet with roughly the characteristics described in above article
I (and a group of people) am actually researching this system myself. We observed a transit of GJ436b on March 30, and we're reducing the data now.
I'd like to point out, however, this paper is NOT a discovery article. I read it in February (before it was published), and I've got it on my desk right in front of me. Basically, it PREDICTS that there MIGHT be a planet of said radius and mass in an orbit about twice as far out as GJ436b (a transiting hot neptune), but it also says that more study is needed to confirm the existence of this planet. What my study was trying to do was to show that there's a change in GJ436b's orbit caused by this new theoretical planet. So far, things look promising, but we haven't confirmed anything yet.
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I'm not sure my college "supports" Linux, as I'm not sure exactly what you consider supporting to entail, but my departments (astronomy and physics) only have linux computers in their computer labs (with the addition of one or two windows boxes. All of the personal computers and laptops owned by faculty and staff are Linux or Mac). Of course, the IT guys are incredibly lazy and it's still Fedora Core 1.0, but it works most of the time. If you're talking about software and hardware help, I wouldn't even trust the University with a windows computer-they are notorious for breaking things and voiding warranties, and most of the people working at campus computing services don't know what they're doing or even care.
I myself am debating this question for my next laptop. I do a lot of image processing on astronomical images, so having that dark definition that glossy gives is nice. However, glossy tends to saturate more easily and has a worse greyscale response, which means that the display of the relative brightness of things is skewed--it kind of ruins the data. If only there were something in between...
Alright, I won't argue, it seems you've convinced yourself of your own point rather handily and won't let go.
You, of course, are making the assumption that there is intelligent extraterrestrial life outside our solar system, a claim which is supported by NO physical evidence. On the other hand, astronomers know that something large is there. Models of star formation predict that planets will form naturally when stars form. I'm going to go ahead and apply Ocham's razor here: 1)Large mass perturbing/blocking light from star 2)Good reason to think that it's a planet 3)No reason to think that an alien civilization even exists, much less has the capability, inclination, or materials to make GIANT space stations about the size of neptune. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this one's a planet.
Here's your answer: They can't actually see the planet itself, nobody's been able to directly image a planet in another solar system yet (this is something I hope to be working on in the next few years). What they can see in the case of Gliese 436 is that the light coming from the star "dips" in intensity a little on a regular basis. This is caused by the 'transit' of Gliese 436b, a neptune mass planet. Basically the planet blocks some light from the star and that is what we actually detect. Also with this system, we've done radial velocity measurements, which involves taking very accurate spectra of the star and watching how the spectral lines move (redshifted or blueshifted). This star, once the fit for the massive, known planet is taken out , still shows a consistent ~1 m/s/year radial velocity signal, which corresponds to a planet with roughly the characteristics described in above article
I (and a group of people) am actually researching this system myself. We observed a transit of GJ436b on March 30, and we're reducing the data now. I'd like to point out, however, this paper is NOT a discovery article. I read it in February (before it was published), and I've got it on my desk right in front of me. Basically, it PREDICTS that there MIGHT be a planet of said radius and mass in an orbit about twice as far out as GJ436b (a transiting hot neptune), but it also says that more study is needed to confirm the existence of this planet. What my study was trying to do was to show that there's a change in GJ436b's orbit caused by this new theoretical planet. So far, things look promising, but we haven't confirmed anything yet.