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Astronomers using the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa have discovered a powerful microwave laser beam firing off in the distant reaches of the cosmos.<\/p>\n
The high-energy emission, known as a maser \u2014 and more colloquially, a \u201cspace laser\u201d \u2014 is produced by the collision of two galaxies<\/a>. And in their new paper<\/a> accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and highlighted by New Scientist, the astronomers say it\u2019s the most powerful of its kind ever found.<\/p>\n Detected nearly 8 billion light years away in a galaxy called H1429-0028, the signal was fortuitously amplified by an effect called gravitational lensing, in which the gravity of another galaxy interposed between the Earth and the signal warps the light behind it like a giant magnifying glass.<\/p>\n \u201cThis system is truly extraordinary,\u201d lead author Thato Manamela, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pretoria, said in a statement<\/a> about the work. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing the radio equivalent of a laser halfway across the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n Fundamentally, masers \u2014 and lasers \u2014 are focused beams of light in the same frequency. In the realm of astrophysics, these can arise from clouds of dust being excited into a higher energy state from the light emitted by other sources, like stars and black holes in the middle of a feeding frenzy<\/a>, causing them to release photons. Then the light produced by these interactions cause other particles to become excited and release yet more photons in the same wavelength.<\/p>\n In the case of a galactic merger<\/a>, the clouds of gas from the colliding realms compress to form stars that produce light, which then can excite hydroxyl molecules. These can be so luminous that astronomers call them \u201cmegamasers.\u201d But this latest maser is so powerful that the researchers argue that it warrants an even higher classification: a \u201cgigamaser.\u201d<\/p>\n The lensing effect, plus the signal\u2019s extraordinary luminosity, immediately caught the astronomers\u2019 attention when they probed H1429-0028 with MeerKAT, a radio telescope comprising 64 different antennae linked together.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a quick look at the 1667 megahertz [frequency], just to see whether it was even detectable, and there was this booming, huge [signal]. It was immediately the record,\u201d coauthor Roger Deane, an associate professor at UP, told New Scientist<\/a>. \u201cIt was serendipitous.\u201d<\/p>\n The gigamaser\u2019s strength is about \u201c100,000 times the luminosity of a star, but in a distant galaxy, concentrated into a very, very small part of the [electromagnetic] spectrum,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Megamasers, let alone gigamasers, are rare. But because the conditions that produce them are so specific, astronomers can use them to infer the conditions of the distant and ancient cosmos. With upgrades to the MeerKAT telescope, the researchers say there\u2019s more of these to be uncovered. \u201cThis is just the beginning,\u201d Manamela said in the statement. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to find just one system \u2014 we want to find hundreds to thousands.\u201d<\/p>\n