{"id":315146,"date":"2026-02-24T18:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T18:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/315146\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T18:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T18:34:09","slug":"meet-the-gigamaser-the-brightest-microwave-laser-ever-spotted-in-deep-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/315146\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Gigamaser\u2014the Brightest Microwave Laser Ever Spotted in Deep Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

Space is full of odd light sources astronomers don\u2019t quite understand, like double supernovas<\/a>, weird blue flashes<\/a>, random Venn diagrams<\/a>, and more. And just when we thought we\u2019d seen it all, there\u2019s a new addition to the list\u2014a natural \u201cspace laser\u201d from the universe\u2019s early days.<\/p>\n

Researchers using the MeerKAT radio telescope spotted an extremely bright, laser-like beam of microwave radiation\u2014a \u201cmaser\u201d\u2014which they tracked back to a violent galaxy merger, designated H-ATLAS J142935.3\u2013002836<\/a>. The system, located more than 8 billion light-years away, would normally be too distant to detect. But a lucky alignment with an unrelated foreground galaxy boosted the already powerful signal, pushing it within MeerKAT\u2019s reach.<\/p>\n

A paper detailing the findings has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and is currently available as a preprint on arXiv<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis system is truly extraordinary,\u201d Thato Manamela, the study\u2019s lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, said in a release<\/a>. \u201cWe are seeing the radio equivalent of a laser halfway across the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Galactic lasers <\/p>\n

Human-made lasers are focused, or coherent, streams of high-energy photons\u2014light particles\u2014that travel at the same frequency. Something similar can happen in space, when galactic collisions lead to extreme pressures that compress gas from both galaxies. Those conditions also stimulate tiny dust particles containing hydroxyl ions\u2014molecules made of hydrogen and oxygen.<\/p>\n

When powerful sources like black holes emit radio waves, already excited particles fall into a concentrated beam of light known as a hydroxyl maser. Such light sources have been observed before but are rather rare, mostly because they typically operate at wavelengths of about 7 inches (18 centimeters)\u2014much longer than those in the optical spectrum.<\/p>\n

A perfect alignment <\/p>\n

The new discovery was truly serendipitous. Notwithstanding the general rarity of masers, the sheer distance between Earth and the galactic system would normally have made observing it nearly impossible.\u00a0But when the team pointed MeerKAT at that section of the sky, it just so happened that a completely unrelated\u2014yet perfectly aligned\u2014galaxy passed in front of the faraway signal, acting as a gravitational lens to further amplify the maser.<\/p>\n

\"CosmicIllustration of the distant galaxy 8 billion light-years away (red), magnified by an unrelated foreground disk galaxy, resulting in a red ring. Credit: Inter-University Institute for Data-Intensive Astronomy <\/p>\n

\u201cThis galaxy acts as a lens\u2014the way a water droplet on a windowpane would behave\u2014because its mass curves the local space-time,\u201d Manamela explained. Essentially, we are \u201cseeing it as it was when the universe was less than half its present age,\u201d the researchers added.<\/p>\n

The first-ever gigamaser <\/p>\n

The signal is seriously bright\u2014so much so that it warrants its own category. If particularly bright masers until now were called \u201cmegamasers,\u201d the new signal is so luminous that it makes more sense to call it a gigamaser, the researchers said in the release.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is about 100,000 times the luminosity of a star, but in a distant galaxy, concentrated into a very, very small part of the [electromagnetic] spectrum,\u201d Roger Deane, study co-author and an astrophysicist at the University of Pretoria, told New Scientist<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Masers, including this particular discovery, are often associated<\/a> with particularly violent, dusty galactic mergers. As such, astronomers thought they could be useful markers for studying cosmic evolution. Accordingly, the team intends to continue the search for similar cosmic lasers, the study noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just the beginning,\u201d Manamela said in the statement. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to find just one system\u2014we want to find hundreds to thousands.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Space is full of odd light sources astronomers don\u2019t quite understand, like double supernovas, weird blue flashes, random…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[909,22735,61,60,82],"class_list":["post-315146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-astrophysics","tag-gravitational-lenses","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}