Science Friday: @Astro_Mike, Einstein's Eclipse, and (Irish) Nanopolitics

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As part of IYOA 2009, there's an amazing expedition happening. Two astronomers and one anthropologist are retracing the steps of a trip that confirmed Einstein's greatest theory. From the BBC:

"In 1919, the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) launched an expedition to observe a total solar eclipse from Principe, to prove or disprove Einstein's theory of general relativity. This week, we are going back."

Astronomer Richard Massey, from the Royal Observatory Edinburgh is keeping a fascinating blog during his trip to Principe to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the original expedition. They're bringing a commemorative plaque and there's more info on the expedition at the IYOA 2009 site.

Don't you wish all your Tweets could start with "From orbit"?

 Mike Massimino, the American astronaut, is tweeting from space. That's right, he's in orbit, typing 140 characters of his thoughts to his 329,246 followers as he circumnavigates the globe every 90 minutes. For example:

"From orbit: Flying over the Pacific Ocean at night there were some thunder storms, it is so cool to see lightning go off below the clouds."

I'm not jealous. No sir. Not at all.

And in other news...

Nanotechnology... the new political satire?

It reads like any other press release on electron microscopes to the uninformed reader (like me)...

"At Trinity College, Dublin, scientists have developed ‘major improvements’ to The TEAM Project (TEAM stands for Transmission Electron Aberration-corrected Microscope) led by Berkeley Lab in a collaboration with DOE’s Argonne and Oak Ridge National Laboratories..."

But this post is the first fusion of nanotech and Irish political humour I've seen on d'internet. Read on and you'll get the punchline, but in fairness, the logos on the current Fiana Fáil posters were asking for a nontechnology joke.