About

My name is Aatish Bhatia. I graduated from Swarthmore College in 2007. I’ve since been living in New Jersey as a grad student at Rutgers University. The winding road to my Ph.D. has taken me from studying quarks and gluons to learning about genomes and studying evolution. In my free time I enjoy voiding warranties, learning to white-water kayak, and exploring the great outdoors. I’m also passionate about teaching and science education.

I write Empirical Zeal because I’ve always thought that science is wonderfully exciting. I cover the bits that blow my mind. What you’ll find here are summaries of new experiments, discoveries and big ideas from fields such as evolutionary biology, genetics, and physics.

If you like what you’re reading, post a comment, find me on twitter, email me at aatish+blog@gmail.com, or just enjoy the blog.

The masthead image is a picture of pollen grains from a variety of common plants, at 500x magnification, taken by a scanning electron microscope. To get a sense of how zoomed in this is, at this scale the length of your arm represents a millimeter. (The bean shaped structures that you see are 50 microns long, or 1/20 of a millimeter long.)

  • http://asianwindow.com NamitaB

    Great, great blog Aatish!

    • Aatish

      Thanks, Namita. Means a lot.

  • Prof. Aloke Kumar

    Aatish …. I know your parents from the Sunday magazine and The Telegraph days…. so I had a special interest to locate your Blog after I came to know about it from a post in twitters ….
    Great Blog …. informative … precise
    Keep it up ….

    • Aatish

      Thanks. And Welcome

  • http://funny-side-of-life.blogspot.com/ Sairam

    Reached here from a tweet. Lovely blog. will bookmark it. Add some facebook , twitter widgets so that it can be shared easily.

    • Aatish

      Thanks! At the bottom of every post is a share button, which lets you link to facebook, twitter, and other stuff.

  • Su Bose

    Aatish LOVELY LOVELY LOVELY … You are foraging right up the same Valley of Wonder that I around in .. Will bookmark this .. but where is the FB like button so I get updates there? Looking below .. for it ..

    cheers

    Suj

  • Su Bose

    Aatish LOVELY LOVELY LOVELY … You are foraging right up the same Valley of Wonder that I wander around in .. Will bookmark this .. but where is the FB like button so I get updates there? Looking below .. for it ..

    cheers

    Suj

    • http://empiricalzeal.com Aatish

      Hi Suj. Thanks! Finally figured out how to add the FB bar you mentioned. Best.

  • Biks Grewal

    Brilliant. You should expand this

    Bikram

    • http://empiricalzeal.com Aatish

      Hi! Glad you liked it. And thanks for sending birders my way!

  • C Arun13

     Brilliant! :)

    • http://empiricalzeal.com Aatish

      Coming from a man of so few words, I consider this high praise! Hope you keep reading.

      • C Arun13

        It’s compelling! Will have to keep reading! :)

  • Sitapriya Moorthi

    Hey,
    I am Sita,  I am your mothers friend Saroj’s niece … she gave me the link to your blog.  I myself am a sincere student of evolution  now for six years … Then again it is the most perfect theory… in more ways than one. Congratulations on a very interesting blog… diverse and uncomplicated!
    Luck!

    • http://www.empiricalzeal.com Aatish

      Hi Sita! One of the nice things about blogging about evolution is that you don’t have to work too hard on catching people’s interest, the subject matter does it for you. :) Glad you’re enjoying the blog, hope you check back often.

      • Marci

        You know, I’d agree that the subject matter does it for you… except you just blew my mind  with the color blue.  

        You work wonders with words.

  • http://thesoftanonymous.com/ James Lloyd

    very nice blog Aatish! I’ll be bookmarking this one…

  • Christian-abend

    You show my photo with the grand prismatic spring. If you like to show it you have to identify it with my sign “Copyright by Leto-A.”

    If you dont like to do this we have a problem and you have to cancel my photo from your site.
    Please give me an answer per flickr-mail

    Greetings from Leto-A.

    • http://www.empiricalzeal.com Aatish

      Done. I usually link through to the author, and have an image sources attribution at the bottom of each post. Also if you think that ‘we have a problem’, I suggest that you read about fair use laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use. As I do not make any profit from this blog, I am legally entitled to use copyrighted material without permission for nonprofit education purposes.

  • http://twitter.com/MolecularLove Brooke LaFlamme

    Hi Aatish! I nominated you for a Liebster award on my site. It’s a way for bloggers to spread the word about other awesome blogs out there. I thought yours definitely deserved some more recognition :)

    • http://www.empiricalzeal.com Aatish

      Hey Brooke! Thanks for the plug. I’ve really enjoyed many of your posts. Your blog is delightfully weird. :)

  • Paul Norris

    Hi Aatish,

    I wanted to let you know that I nominated you for the Liebster Blog Award!

    Here’s the post: http://animalwise.org/2012/01/03/liebster-award-and-nominees/.

    Regards,

    Paul

  • Daniel Greene

    I’m just a blue collar husband and dad that didn’t get enough education when I was younger. I love the blog. It really is nice that the internet exists and that guys like me can learn from people like you. Keep up the great work!

    • http://www.empiricalzeal.com Aatish

      Thank you so much for your very kind and humble words. It’s incredibly gratifying to hear that my writing is meaningful to you, and I’m sure that I could learn a whole lot from you as well. You are very much in the intended audience of this blog, so welcome, and thanks for reading!

  • http://www.facebook.com/gaurav.nagalia Gaurav Nagalia

    Just got to your blog.. Kudos to minute physics. Absolutely Brilliant Aatish!! Will be looking out for more entries..

  • Jack White

    Congratulations for a wonderfull and well done blog. If ever you feel discouraged (it is a lot of work, I’m sure it can get stressful), just come back at the comments section and think of all the minds you helped grow. Thank you for doing it!

  • Eirik

    Hey, really love your blog! It’s great too read a blog about physics, and I especially loved your last post about solar air-planes. I think it’s great that you mixed social issues like our environmental problems with easy-to-follow math/physics. Keep up the good work :)