Sixty minutes of lights out in recognition of the fact that humans need to take action on climate change. This is the premise of Earth Hour. Perhaps you might have heard of it. If you live in Sydney, Australia, you'd definitely have heard of it since it was the first major city to turn its lights out. Earth Hour may be coming to your own town soon. More details in the full article.

Last year gave us the news of a madly love-struck astronaut, and this year, we'll be witnessing how taking out books outside the premises without asking permission will take something important away from you: in this case, the privilege to be the first person from your country to be sent into space. Read all about it in the full article.

With everything that's currently happening, the US National Academy  of Engineering was able to identify three of the greatest challenges that were challenging humanity. These were the quality of life, clean water, and computer intelligence. More information in the full article.

In an effort to combine the spirit of the Christmas season with that of  concern for the environment, Tishman Speyer Properties, manager and co-owner of the Rockefeller Center in New York, has decided to go for a "greener" Christmas tree this year with the use of energy-saving light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Aside from that, Tishman Speyer has an alternative source of electricity for the Rockefeller Center complex.

Find out what it is after the jump!

Google and the X-Prize Foundation have set up a high brow challenge to any private, non-government entity who can land a rover on the moon and send back at least a gigabyte of images, video and data back to Earth.

The Internet search giant is willing to invest over US$ 30 million to anyone willing to take up the herculean task.

The first prize of US$ 20 million will be given to the first private firm to reach the moon and then soft land a rover to travel at least 500m and gather a specific set of images, video, and data. The second prize winner will get up to US$ 5 million for being able to repeat the first placer's achievements.

Bonuses of US$ 5 million will be given to rovers which complete other objectives such as traveling further on the Moon, taking pictures of Apollo hardware, finding water-ice, and surviving an entire lunar night.

X-Prize Foundation CEO Peter Diamandis explains the objective for such a competition: "We are confident that teams from around the world will help develop new robotic and virtual presence technology, which will dramatically reduce the cost of space exploration."

Challengers have until 2012 to complete the task. After that, the prize money will be lowered to US$ 15 million until 2014, when the competition will officially end. This is actually the third competition administered by the X-Prize Foundation.

The first one involved a similar "space race" while the second one was the sequencing of 100 human genomes in 10 days.

The internet giant, Google, has set its visions beyond the matrix and wants to head out to space. They made a new partnership with a group of scientists to create a huge sky-scanning telescope, it is Google's quest to be able to provide the public with access to digital footage of the skies beyond.

From asteroids to supernovas to distant galaxies, the telescope under construction is geared to put these celestial bodies in view all the way from a mountaintop in Chile. With the latest technology, the telescope should be able to take a series of 15-second exposures that will allow it to cover the sky every three nights.

According to the manager of the yet-unnamed telescope company, he could already envision the day when Google would be "our sort of window to the general public." Not that they aren't already. Let's just say, that window only gets bigger.

Google and NASA Ames Research Center, two entities that are seemingly worlds apart, have recently signed a Space Act Agreement, resulting to a partnership formed between said agencies. With this new partnership, they plan to tackle various technical problems that both parties struggle with: data management and computing, and human-computer interface.

First off, Google and Ames plan to focus on having NASA's most useful information available on the Internet. There are a lot of interesting things that will hopefully be available in the near future, like real-time weather visualization and forecasting, high-resolution 3-D maps of the moon and Mars, and real-time tracking of the International Space Station and the space shuttle.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin says,

This agreement between NASA and Google will soon allow every American to experience a virtual flight over the surface of the moon or through the canyons of Mars. This innovative combination of information technology and space science will make NASA's space exploration work accessible to everyone.

NASA and Google have other plans to work together in a number of different collaborations which includes joint research, products, education and many others.

But are they really worlds apart? On one hand is Google, a private company that specializes on innovative search technologies and connects users to information they seek. NASA on the other hand, is a federal agency that has more information about our planet and space than any other entity in the world. On second thought, this might just be a perfect match.

Google Inc., in its quarters at Mountain View, California, announced its partnership with El Solutions - an energy innovations company - to install 1.6 megawatts of solar photovoltaic panels to create solar energy. According to Google, the electricity generated from the solar energy can power about 1,000 average California homes.

Solar cells provides long-lasting source of electricity that is very environment-friendly. Unlike fuels, the photovoltaic cells don't emit pollution and is very low in terms of maintenance. Also, photovoltaic cells can be an advantage in the long run since energy from the sun is virtually free and unlimited. And California is surely one of the best places to install solar energy technologies with its sunny climate.

Photovoltaic, also known as solar cells, is just one of the means to acquire solar energy. They are commonly seen in low-power devices such as calculators. Aside from benefits like producing clean and renewable renewable energy, it also allow its users to save electricity and money. Google also added, "We believe this project demonstrates that a large investment in renewable energy can be profitable."

"Writing is easy, it's quality that's hard." We do this all for you. We at QJ write a lot. We pick out the best news out there and present it to you guys, steaming hot and fresh. We got articles all over the internet that needs to be reported on immediately. We do this for the readers out there who may have little time to search for the best gaming, science, or gadget news.

Yet, there are times we get stumped. Some people call this "writer's block." It's a situation where a writer just has no creative ideas flowing at into the page. He or she just stares at it, dumbfounded. How does we get over this? Scott Berkun, gives some ideas about how to get the creative juices again. He calls these "his writing hack".

• Start with a word. Write any word on the page. Sometimes it's the blank page that worries the writer more than anything else.
• Write about how it feels not to be able to write. It helps to know how something affects you. One may find out the reason why there's so much resistance in writing this particular subject. Did you have a traumatic experience with the subject? Does it remind you of something that you dislike? As soon as the feeling's out there, you'll notice that you've already began to write.
• Have a conversation. With your friends, dog, or self. Sometimes we just need to decentralize ourselves from our writing tools and just let it all hang out. Sometimes the best ideas come when you're not thinking of it.
• Read something you hate. If you hate newspapers read them and then rant or write about them. Negative energy is still energy. Although you'll need to get this off of your chest as soon as possible.
• Warm up. Like exercising, we all need to warm up before we start to write. The worst thing you could do to your brain is to suddenly jolt it by ordering it to come up with ideas while it's still thinking what you ate yesterday. Some mental exercise like typing the alphabet backwards, would be great. Google it!

The full article awaits after the jump!

The one thing about conspiracy theories and far-fetched technology is that it grabs so much attention very quickly once made known. Steorn, the company that claims to have made a free-energy machine, has been making its rounds just about everywhere since their ad in the Economist, and it seems their strategy is proving very adequate in its ability to generate energy.

Nervous energy and a lot of website traffic.

According to Sean McCarthy, chief executive of Steorn, their website has "gone from total obscurity to 750,000 hits on Google" and has received investment offers and bids for rights to create a film on it.  McCarthy has also received everything from praise in emails to abusive phone calls to visits from those lovely people we call stalkers.

While this publicity is somewhat value-neutral, save for the stalking, it's starting to take on a Snakes on a Plane kind of frenzy that isn't entirely healthy. We at QJ hope it's true at least, thermodynamics be damned, so that we can at least protect ourselves from the problems that warring for oil and natural resources brings.