“Call every lab you know. Tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays.”
<a name=\'more\'></a>– Bruce Banner, The Avengers

Can you believe it’s been seven years since the Avengers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe first came together to stop Loki from taking over Earth? The MCU has come a long way since then.



Back in The Avengers, in their quest to stop Loki, the Avengers needed to locate the Tesseract, a powerful energy source (that just so happened to contain the Space Stone, though they didn’t know it at the time). In order to find the missing tesseract (and Loki), Bruce Banner directed, “Call every lab you know. Tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays.”

Gamma rays are a type of ionization radiation that comes from an unstable nucleus trying to become stable. To become stable, an unstable nucleus will decay or transform by releasing particles or waves that carry energy. In some cases, this decay releases gamma rays, which are photons or elementary particles moving at the speed of light. (Gamma rays are also what made Bruce Banner the Hulk.)

The Tesseract happened to emit gamma rays. If the gamma rays could be detected, the Tesseract could be found. To do that, Bruce suggested spectrometers.

Spectrometers are instruments used by scientists to measure spectra that could be used to identify objects or substances. Usually the word spectrometer specifically refers to an instrument that measures the electromagnetic spectrum, or the range of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation and their intensities. Electromagnetic radiation includes gamma rays, but also includes x-rays, ultraviolet, visible light, infrared, microwaves, and radio waves.








Every element has a unique set of electromagnetic radiation it absorbs or emits. Thus, the electromagnetic spectrum can be used to identify the substance being examined. The plot below shows an example of a gamma ray spectrum with several clear peaks. These peaks help to identity the source as natural uranium.



So when Bruce Banner tells Fury to “calibrate [spectrometers] for gamma rays,” he’s suggesting to use spectrometers to look for the electromagnetic radiation signature of the tesseract.

Why put the spectrometers on the roof? This may be a reference to removing items that would block the gamma rays from the tesseract. Gamma rays are pretty penetrating, but they can be blocked with several feet of concrete or a few inches of dense material (such as lead, for example). This shielding may be used to reduce background gamma rays. (You could argue that placing a highly sophisticated and likely expensive instrument on a roof may not be the best idea. That would be a valid point, though to be fair, we’re dealing with saving the world here.)

A quick note: you can’t use every spectrometer for every type of measurement. Some spectrometers are optimized for certain wavelength ranges or specific cases. There are also spectrometers that don’t deal with the electromagnetic spectrum at all. A mass spectrometer, for example, separates isotopes, molecules, and molecular fragments by mass. It wouldn’t help to track the gamma signature of the tesseract.



Keep calm and science on.https://archive.janatna.com/