Is Gatchaman Crowds set in the same universe as Gatchaman? I read about the upcoming Gatchaman Crowds anime.

According to this source, the series is about


  "Gatchaman" — warriors who fight in special reinforced suits powered
  by "NOTE," the manifestation of special spiritual powers in living
  beings.


This surprised me - the original Gatchaman series had no supernatural material. Some pretty improbable things happened, but they were all understood to be advanced science &amp; technology. The "Bird Go!" transformations were not spiritual but technological.

So, is Gatchaman Crowds set in the same universe as the original Gatchaman?

Note: I'm aware this can't be answered until the show starts, or until Tatsunoko reveals more information.
I don't have a definitive answer to this, but based on the first 2 episodes of Crowds (all that has aired so far), at the very least there's no clear connection between the two series. If they are in the same universe, the characters in the two series don't seem to be interacting at all. There are definitely references to the original series, e.g. all of the members of the Gatchaman team in the original series have counterparts in Crowds, and many of the concepts stayed the same. 

There's good reason to believe that the two series are in different universes. In the original Gatchaman, all of their powers were, at least in principle, just the product of science and technology. In Crowds, by contrast, their Gatchaman powers are of some sort of mystic origin. It's not yet clear how they work, but they aren't purely within the realm of science fiction anymore. This rendition of Gatchaman is thus fundamentally different from the original, and probably only makes sense in its own universe.

Wikipedia seems to agree with this, describing Crowds as "based in the Gatchaman universe", which would seem to preclude it from being in the same universe. However, there's no solid source for that statement, so it's at best questionable.

Of course, this answer could still change (at least until Crowds ends) but for the moment it seems more likely that they are in different universes.