{"id":232396,"date":"2026-03-02T13:13:55","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T19:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/meerkat-discovers-record-breaking-cosmic-laser-halfway-across-the-universe"},"modified":"2026-03-02T13:13:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T19:13:55","slug":"meerkat-discovers-record-breaking-cosmic-laser-halfway-across-the-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/meerkat-discovers-record-breaking-cosmic-laser-halfway-across-the-universe","title":{"rendered":"MeerKAT discovers record-breaking cosmic laser halfway across the universe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/meerkat-discovers-record-breaking-cosmic-laser-halfway-across-the-universe.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Hydroxyl megamasers are natural \u201cspace lasers\u201d\u2014extremely bright radio-wavelength emissions produced when hydroxyl molecules in gas-rich, merging galaxies crash into one another. These cosmic collisions compress gas and stimulate large reservoirs of hydroxyl molecules to amplify radio emission.<\/p>\n<p>The physical mechanism is very similar to lasers on Earth, but operates at a much longer wavelength of light of about 18 centimeters, rather than the optical light that our eyes can see. When this special radio light is exceptionally bright, it is termed a megamaser\u2014a \u201ccosmic beacon\u201d that can be seen across vast stretches of the universe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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. Hydroxyl megamasers are natural \u201cspace lasers\u201d\u2014extremely bright radio-wavelength emissions produced when hydroxyl molecules in gas-rich, merging galaxies [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}