Just a note to let you know that your book has been reviewed on the new online book review site of the American Academy of Religion, Reading Religion. You can find your book here: (http://readingreligion.org/books/big-bang-and-god). I encourage you to take a look at the review and comment on it if you would like. (You need to be an AAR member to comment.)
While you’re there, please take the time to see what Reading Religion has to offer. Our aim is to review as many titles as possible from among all the scholarly books in religious studies and allied fields. You will see that in addition to being able able to read reviews of books, you can also find out what has recently been published in religious studies. We hope you will return the service that has been extended to you already, and volunteer to review a book from among the many listed on the site as available for review.
I look forward to meeting you online! Feel free to tweet out news of your review (#readingreligion) and/or post it on social media.
The evidence is based on a series of stratospheric balloon flights in which hitherto unknown biological entities were recovered from heights in the range 23-28 km. The ISPA balloon project, which is still in its final planning stage, aims to extend this work by exploring greater heights in the stratosphere and looking for evidence of microorganisms as well as viruses.
New Collaborations
Chandra Wickramasinghe is collaborating with Professors Christopher Tout and Gehan Amaratunga of Cambridge University on a paper: “The nature of interstellar carbon grains and astrobiology”.
We are also planning laboratory experiments on microorganisms to test predictions of the biological model of interstellar dust.
Jiangwen Qu of the Tianjin Center for Disease Control and Prevention, China has published a paper in Reviews of Medicine and Virology in which they argue that maxima and minima in the sunspot cycle are causally linked to the emergence of new strains of influenza that have pandemic potential. The link is most likely to be caused by the introduction of new RNA virions with which already circulating influenza viruses can recombine or hybridize. Qu points out that keeping a watch on the impending maxima/minima of the sunspot cycle combined with ground-based epidemiology and virology might serve to predict the next pandemic.
Fig.1
The association between the sunspot cycle and influenza pandemics, 1700–2014 A.D. Red circles represent the starting years of definite influenza pandemics; blue triangles represent the starting years of possible influenza pandemics.
In other papers in press by Qu and his team in China, collaborating with Chandra Wickramasinghe, reached a similar conclusion in connection with sunspots and outbreaks of SARS and MERS outbreaks and Ebola.
Japanese translations
Gensuke Tokoro has translated “A Journey with Fred Hoyle” (2nd Edition) and “The Search for Our Cosmic Ancestry” by Chandra Wickramasinghe into the Japanese language. The first of these Japanese editions to be published is “A Journey with Fred Hoyle” the cover of which is below:
New book and interview
Chandra Wickramasinghe is co-authoring a book entitled “Cosmic Womb” with Robert Bauval to be published in Spring 2017 by Inner Traditions, USA. Interview on u-tube:
Lectures abroad
On October 5th Chandra Wickramasinghe will deliver a lecture “Cosmic Life: A brave new world view” to the Astronomical Societies of Chile:
http://www.astrosaval.cl/congreso2016-programa
From 9th to 25th October he will be giving lectures and engaging in joint research projects in India and Sri Lanka.
