Aside from the tsunami warning that spread across the globe after the Chile earthquake, another effect of it is the 66.6 exajoules set free by the catastrophe.

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, days will now be shorter because of the “quake’s hit shifted the Earth’s axis by three inches.” As you very well know, the axis determines the length of time for each day.

Thanks to computer detectors, the change will result in days that are 1.26 microseconds shorter than in the past. That’s about 0.00000126, which is honestly not that much. There have also been more visible changes like islands changing its position. Santa Maria actually was reported to have raised two meters after the earthquake.

This solar charger is probably one of the most portable eco-friendly devices out there. It features a lightweight and compact charger that can charge most of your electronic devices especially when you’re on the go. There’s some crystalline solar cells embedded into this device to catch the energy from the sun’s rays.

Here are the features of the FreeLoader Pico Solar Charger:

* Compact and lightweight solar charger for small electronic devices
* Advanced solar cell and lithium ion battery technology
* Solar panels will charge its internal battery in as little as 10 hours
* If you’re lazy or pressed for time, you can charge the Pico’s internal battery via USB
* Delivers its charge to your cell phone, iPod, or GPS in just 30 minutes
* Provides up to:
o 35 hours on mobile phone
o 14 hours on iPod
o 1.5 hours on GPS
* Master power cable and four adapters to fit the following:
* Small pin Nokia
* Sony Ericsson
* Mini USB (Motorola, Blackberry, most smart phones, Garmin and many GPS units, PDAs, etc)
* Connects to virtually any device supplied with a USB charge or sync cable
* Technical Information:
o 75mA premium quality crystalline solar cells
o 800mAh environmentally friendly Li-ion battery - typical battery life is 2 years
o Input voltage - 5v/250mA
* Size: 105 x 45 x 11.5mm
* Weight: 49g

If you want this solar charger, you would need to fork out about $39.99.

This star shot is described by Hubble-site as the “largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood.”

According to experts, this group of stars is called the R136, which is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula. This Nebula is a “turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.” The 30 Doradus Nebula is the largest and most prolific star-forming region in our galaxy.

Many of what we see as diamond-like icy blue stars are massive constellations that can only be seen in the 30 Doradus Nebula since it is the only nebula that can house such amazingly large group of stars. These “hefty stars,” are believed to transform as supernovas in the coming years.

This shot of the R136 were taken between October 20 and 27 this year by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. The blue lights are from the hottest and biggest stars, the green lights are from oxygen and the red lights are from hydrogen.

The video you see above shows the Earth’s weather from August 17 to August 26 this year. With the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) GEOS-5 atmospheric general circulation model, the agency was able to shoot this 7-kilometer resolution of the Earth’s weather.

The GEOS-5 atmospheric general circulation model, which was based on the Earth System Modeling Framework, was developed by NASA Goddard’s scientists. It is an open source project “for building climate, numerical weather prediction, data assimilation and other Earth science software application.”

There is also a 1080p high definition of this same video over at NASA’s website so if you want to see this thing more clearly, you can head over there.

But really, isn’t it amazing what technology can do? The visual display of the Earth’s weather in something this simple and basic only makes us realize how insignificant we really are.

As much as I would like to go gaga over this new solar-powered iPod dock from Regen, I might have to pass on this one. A three-foot high device is not exactly my cup of tea.

Same as with Regen’s Renu, this new one (called Reverb) will both amaze and appall you. It is capable of shelling out 60 watts of power straight from the sun’s rays. The Reverb can also generate enough electricity to play your music for 4.5 hours at full volume and 12 hours at normal volume.

The device will, however, take 20 hours in order to get a full charge from the sun. But if you’re not that patient, you can plug it in an electric socket.

Honestly though, do you think a $2,229 worth of solar cells is something you need for an iPod dock. If only environmental geeks can produce eco-friendly gadgets for a cheaper price, then maybe there’s hope for climate change after all.

The Reverb will make its debut in April 2010.

On Wednesday, Plastic Logic announces that its e-book reader will debut with WiFi connectivity through the AT&T’s 3G network. The e-book reader is expected to come out next year.

This move keeps the Plastic Logic E-Book Reader with Amazon’s Kindle that uses Sprint’s wireless connectivity. This enables the Plastic Logic E-Book Reader to connect to the Internet for book downloads and basic browsing. The Plastic Logic E-Book Reader is about 8.5 x 11 inch and less than 0.25 inch in thickness. It also has a touchscreen interface. The company, however, did not announce the price for this device.

The Plastic Logic E-Book Reader can also support document formats such as PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

Skyline Solar has designed a solar concentrator that relies on more sheet metal and less silicon to cut costs.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up on Monday introduced its product, called High Gain Solar (HGS) arrays, and said that it has raised an additional $24.6 million from New Enterprise Associates and other investors. It’s one of six companies to get a Department of Energy grant worth $3 million for solar photovoltaics research.

Its arrays, expected to be available later this year, are targeted at commercial customers and utilities looking to generate from about 100 kilowatts to megawatts worth of electricity. The company has a 24-kilowatt demonstration facility at a plant in San Jose, Calif., with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.

Skyline Solar’s concentrator is built around a reflective metal trough that concentrates light onto strips of monocrystalline silicon cells. A tracking system follows the sun over the course of the day so that sunlight bounces onto the cells directly.

By concentrating the light onto these cells, Skyline Solar says it can deliver 10 times more energy per gram of silicon compared with traditional flat solar panels.

Because silicon is an expensive material, there are a number of solar companies using concentrators to squeeze more electricity from solar cells. Skyline Solar CEO Bob MacDonald founded the company after leaving SolFocus, a company that uses more expensive, high-efficiency solar cells and mirrors to concentrate light 500 times.

Skyline Solar’s troughs concentrate the light by only a factor of 10 but its arrays use relatively few parts and those parts can be manufactured with existing equipment, such as that for car factories. An air-cooled heat sink is placed behind the solar cells to improve efficiency.

The market for midsize solar arrays is growing, Travis Bradford, solar industry analyst at the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development, told Technology Review.

Utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric expects to install 500 megawatts worth of solar power in part through midsize solar installations. Other potential customers include industrial facilities with enough land and good sun.

But it’s unclear that Skyline Solar’s design will be much cheaper on balance because the tracking and mounting system adds costs and the prices for traditional flat solar panels are dropping, Bradford said. Via Cnet

Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that will render people and other objects invisible.

Researchers say they can redirect light around 3D objects using metamaterials–artificially engineered structures created at a nano scale that contain optical properties not found in nature, according to an Associated Press report.

People see objects as a result of the light reflecting or scattering off them. This new mixture of materials has “negative refractive” properties that keep light from being absorbed or reflected by the object, allowing only the light from behind the object to be seen. Essentially, the material bends visible light in a way that eliminates the creation of reflections or shadows in much the way water flows around a stone.

The findings, to be released later this week in Nature and Science, were made by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Xiang Zhang. The research, which was funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Office and the National Science Foundation’s Nano-Scale Science and Engineering Center, could have broad applications, including for the military.

But the materials work in limited wavelengths, so they won’t be used to hide buildings from satellites, said Jason Valentine, who is a co-author of one of the papers.

“We are not actually cloaking anything,” Valentine told Reuters. While the Harry Potter series of books and films has made the idea of a personal “invisibility cloak” popular, he says, “I don’t think we have to worry about invisible people walking around any time soon. To be honest, we are just at the beginning of doing anything like that.” Via Cnet

While out testing the very stylish Aston Martin DB9 Volante in the Santa Cruz Mountains recently, we ran across the car’s opposite, a Mercedes-Benz F-Cell research car. We caught up with the F-Cell (easily) and followed it to a vista point, where we cornered its driver and started grilling him about the car. It’s not often you see the future of the automobile out in the wild like this.

This F-Cell was from the first generation, built into Mercedes-Benz’s A-class platform, a small vehicle that’s not sold in the U.S. Its 5,000-psi hydrogen tank feeds a fuel cell that produces electricity, in turn powering an 87-horsepower electric motor.

The driver of the car was a Mercedes-Benz engineer stationed with the car in Palo Alto, California. The company maintains many test fleets. He had pulled into the parking lot not because he thought James Bond was on his tail, but to plug his laptop into the F-Cell and download diagnostic data. Mercedes-Benz has logged well over a million miles with these F-Cell cars, and every mile yields useful data about performance in the real world.

That first generation of F-Cell has a range of 110 miles, and seemed to have no problem negotiating the steep hills where we found it. In contrast, our 12 cylinder Aston Martin was burning gas at around 15 mpg, and would ultimately show a range of about 225 miles in our driving.

Mercedes-Benz has a new generation of the F-Cell vehicle in testing right now, based on the bigger B-class platform. It uses new materials technology for its hydrogen tanks to hold 10,000 psi, giving the car a range of 250 miles. Its electric motor is rated at 136 horsepower and 215 pound-feet of torque, although the fuel cell output is only 108 horsepower.

Fuel cell vehicles are basically electric vehicles that use hydrogen tanks rather than batteries for energy storage. With current technology, fuel cell cars tend to have greater range than pure electric cars. Hydrogen tanks are lighter than big battery packs and take much less time to fill. However, electric cars have the advantage of an existing charging infrastructure–a hydrogen station infrastructure has yet to be built. Via Cnet

As this image shows us, there is a wide range in the percentage of people talking about swine flu in wall posts from state to state. Texas has 0.82 percent of its Facebook users mentioning swine flu, while Mississippi only has 0.29 percent. Hotbeds for the outbreak, such as California, Texas, and New York obviously show the greatest concentration of users discussing swine flu. The numbers in Canada are significantly lower than those in the U.S., obviously showing that the Canucks aren’t getting as concerned yet.

All of this data was generated using Facebook’s Lexicon service, which tracks how frequently certain terms are mentioned in wall posts. The Facebook data definitely gives us a better understanding of who is talking about the outbreak and can help us to visualize the spread of information on the subject.

The role that social media has played in the spread of information throughout the swine flu outbreak has been significant. Some would argue that social media has helped to fuel the fire, along with the constant coverage on the news. For better or for worse, social media is likely to be one of the primary mediums through which information spreads in a crisis moving forward.

Check out the Facebook data here. Via Cnet