One day, you could be in a scientific research lab on Long Island trying to create a quark-gluon plasma. The next moment, you could be out in the middle of a field collecting cosmic rays or even teaching students on Creighton’s campus. But the Rev. Thomas McShane, S.J. can never be too sure what he’ll be doing on a day-to-day basis.

McShane is a physics professor who has been at Creighton since 1963. He has taught nearly every physics class Creighton offers.

McShane is not only a professor and a Jesuit, but he’s also a researcher. He has been working on projects at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory and has even been involved with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), to name just a few organizations.

Since 1993, McShane has been heavily involved with experiments that concern the quark-gluon plasma matter.

“We are trying to recreate a form of matter that has not existed in our universe since a fraction of a millisecond after the big-bang occurred, and that matter is the quark-gluon plasma,” McShane explained.

McShane travels to the Brookhaven National Laboratory, located on Long Island, to help with the quark-gluon experiments.

“To begin the experiment, we strip electrons off gold atoms and accelerate the gold atoms in a circular path. We then allow these gold atoms to collide at 99.995 percent of the speed of light right around a very complicated detector. And this is where all hell breaks loose. We then try to find out what happened,” McShane said.

McShane, a native of Omaha, first came to Creighton when he was finished with his studies at St. Louis University and Springhill College in Mobile, Ala., and has been here ever since.

The process of his studies not only involved becoming a professor, but also becoming a Jesuit.

One of the first things one realizes about McShane is how humorous and intelligent he is, throwing numbers, jokes and quark-gluon plasma information at you all at once.

Then you’ll notice his lab and all the objects that are in it. The lab is filled to the brim with large computers, machines that have various purposes and clocks that display times from countries halfway around the world.

This is the perfect room for an electronics lab, if you ask students in the physics department.

According to McShane, experimentalists, like him, do not believe they have achieved obtaining the quark-gluon plasma particle, but theorists believe they have been able to form the particle via the atom collider.

McShane is also involved in a local experiment involving high schools and colleges throughout Nebraska. This project involves cosmic rays.

“A very highly energetic particle like a proton slams into the outer atmosphere and breaks up a nitrogen particle. Then these particles slam into other particles and the more this goes on, the more spread out this shower will be in the atmosphere,” he said.

“When it gets to the Earth, for instance, we have a high school in Scottsbluff that is one of the places where one of our data collectors is located,” he said.

“So, say we look at information from Creighton and Scottsbluff, and two events happen within a few milliseconds of each other, then the suspicion would be that these two situations both belong to the same shower.

“Then we look at other institutions and compare the findings. From there we analyze our research and apply it to what we are studying.”

While McShane isn’t researching, one can find him on Creighton’s campus. McShane is a different kind of professor according to students.

“I really like the fact that Father McShane teaches in the physics department,” said Tony Pirrozoli, Arts & Sciences senior.

“I never thought that I’d have a Jesuit teaching me physics, but it’s different, and I like it. I’m sure he likes it to. You can always tell when a professor really loves to teach.”

McShane would have to agree that he likes the scientific work and opportunites he has had at Creighton.

“I think being a professor and researcher is a lot of fun. It gets you in contact with people and ideas, very interesting people and ideas,” McShane said.