Astronomers Using MeerKAT Spot a Cosmic Laser Halfway Across the Universe
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Astronomers using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa have discovered the most distant hydroxyl megamaser ever detected. It is located in a violently merging galaxy more than 8 billion light-years away, opening a new radio astronomy frontier.
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Astronomers Using MeerKAT Spot a Cosmic Laser Halfway Across the Universe By Matthew Williams - March 05, 2026 10:22 PM UTC | Observing The Universe is full of surprises, including a fascinating type of "space laser" known as Mega-Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation . More specifically, hydroxyl megamasers are extremely bright radio-wavelength emissions produced when gas-rich galaxies collide. This compresses the gas and stimulates large reservoirs of hydroxyl molecules (-OH) to amplify radio emissions. Using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, astronomers discovered a hydroxyl megamaser located in a violent galactic merger more than 8 billion light-years away. Whereas previous OHM surveys have been limited to redshift values of z = 0.25 (about 3.5 billion light years), the MeerKAT team pushed the limits of detection to z = 1.027. As the team notes in their study, which was accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, the detection was due in part to MeerKAT's high sensitivity at centimeter wavelengths and sophisticated algorithms and computing platform. It was further enabled by a massive galaxy in the foreground that amplified the light source - a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. Dr. Thato Manamela, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pretoria and lead author of the new study, explained in a South African Radio Astronomy Observatory press release : This system is truly extraordinary. We are seeing the radio equivalent of a laser halfway across the universe. Not only that, during its journey to Earth, the radio waves are further amplified by a perfectly aligned, yet unrelated foreground galaxy. This galaxy acts as a lens, the way a water droplet on a window pane would, because its mass curves the local space-time. So we have a radio laser passing through a cosmic telescope before being detected by the powerful MeerKAT radio telescope – all together enabling a wonderf...
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