{"id":1049,"date":"2011-04-03T06:12:46","date_gmt":"2011-04-02T20:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/?p=1049"},"modified":"2011-04-03T06:12:46","modified_gmt":"2011-04-02T20:12:46","slug":"wickramasinghe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/2011\/04\/wickramasinghe-1049.html","title":{"rendered":"Chandra Wickramasinghe Dismissed"},"content":{"rendered":"

This totally sucks. Chandra Wickramasinghe is a superstar astronomer (in my opinion) and will most likely be acknowledged (one day) as the most progressive comet researcher of his era. He has given us the concept of dark comets<\/em>, and greatly helped publicize the study of\u00a0 panspermia<\/em>, which he collaborated on with Sir Fred Hoyle.<\/p>\n

Now his department at Cardiff University, with a dozen staff, has been shut down to save a mere \u00a315,000. While I’m sure their work will continue, no longer being associated with a university means their ideas won’t find as many people. This decision<\/a> is seemingly political (or even religious?).<\/p>\n

Prof Wickramasinghe added: \u201cMost of our publications last year were in the International Journal of Astrobiology, a mainstream Cambridge University publication which is heavily peer-reviewed and is not a trivial journal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The professor, who appealed against his sacking, is now seeking private funding for the centre to continue as a limited company and says he has had two or three expressions of interest in recent days.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cI\u2019ve got ongoing collaborations with, for example, the Russian space agency. Next year is 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin\u2019s first manned trip around the world. To mark this, we\u2019re doing lots of experiments such as looking for viruses and evidence of cometary organics coming in from space. To continue work like that I have to set up a company.\u201d<\/p>\n
An official spokesman for Cardiff University said: \u201cThe decision to close the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology (CCAB) in 2010 was made on the basis of budgetary and strategic reasons and not because of any views expressed by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe or the Centre.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Show your support for Professor Wickramasinghe by finding yourself a safe spot, ASAP, in case a dark comet is heading our way in 2012. Don’t wait until it is spotted, for that will be way too late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This totally sucks. Chandra Wickramasinghe is a superstar astronomer (in my opinion) and will most likely be acknowledged (one day) as the most progressive comet researcher of his era. He has given us the concept of dark comets, and greatly helped publicize the study of\u00a0 panspermia, which he collaborated on with Sir Fred Hoyle.
\nNow his department at Cardiff University, with a dozen staff, has been shut down to save a mere \u00a315,000. While I’m sure their work will continue, no longer being associated with a university means their ideas won’t find as many people. This decision is seemingly political (or even religious?).
\nProf Wickramasinghe added: \u201cMost of our publications last year were in the International Journal of Astrobiology, a mainstream Cambridge University publication which is heavily peer-reviewed and is not a trivial journal.\u201d
\nThe professor, who appealed against his sacking, is now seeking private funding for the centre to continue as a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dark-comets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1098,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions\/1098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}