Pianist or Astrophysicist?
Renaissance Man and Indiana University Cyclotron Facility Interim Director Jim Musser combines a career of particle physics with his life-long love of playing piano and guitars he built by hand
Since before he can remember, Jim Musser was on track to become a professional pianist. Encouragement from his grandmother began his musical interests and then long hours of practicing throughout high school honed his skills. But the University of Arizona presented an opportunity to follow his second interest -- science.
Today, Musser is a professor at Indiana University Bloomington in particle astrophysics and interim director of the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility (IUCF). However, he still maintains his musical pursuits through playing piano and strumming guitars, which he builds from scratch.
"Playing electric guitars at very loud volumes is a great stress release technique," said Musser with a wry smile. "The louder the better."
Like his musical talents, Musser's interest in astronomy and physics were evident at an early age. He began lecturing at the Herrett Observatory in his home town of Twin Falls, Idaho, while still in grade school. Although he began his college career double majoring in music and physics, he quickly found it impossible to pursue both, and had a decision to make.
"I came to the conclusion that it's much easier to earn a living as a mediocre scientist than mediocre musician," said Musser -- only half joking.
But Musser's decision seems to have paid off -- and he has turned out to be more than just a mediocre scientist. Musser works as part of a collaboration called the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search, or MINOS. The experiment takes particles called neutrinos from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) just outside of Chicago and beams them 450 miles through solid rock to the Soudan Underground Laboratory, located in an old iron mine a half-mile beneath Soudan, Minn. Musser oversees the writing of the software that makes sense of the raw data that is collected.
Additionally, Musser works with two other projects. One is called the Cosmic Ray Electron Synchrotron Telescope (CREST), which involves a helium balloon collecting data about distant supernovae while circling the South Pole for a month at a time. The other is an extension of MINOS called NOvA, where Musser is responsible for filling the experiment's detector with 15 kilotons -- almost 60,000 gallons -- of high-quality mineral oil.
"I'm basically a gas station attendant," said Musser with a laugh. "But it's an important job, and it will take several years." Once the project is built and running experiments, Musser will likely work with software for that project as well.
Meanwhile, when he's not working on cutting-edge particle astrophysics projects or playing in bluegrass jam sessions with local friends, he's building guitars from scratch. He began five years ago when his wife bought him a kit from Martin with the difficult wood shaping already completed and only some assembly required.
"But that felt like cheating," said Musser, who has now built 10 guitars from scratch using chissels and his hands in his garage. "It's still very mysterious to me what distinguishes an exceptional guitar from an average one. I think you'd have to build 1,000 to have any solid idea, and I'm a long way from that."
