Astronomers have discovered a space laser that shoots light rays on Earth from a distance of 5 billion light-years, and the “laser” with strong radio waves, called “the megamaser”, was discovered by the MeerKAT telescope in the North Cape, South Africa, and according to astronomers, the discovery that The record-breaker is the farthest of its kind ever discovered.
According to the British newspaper, “Daily Mail”, this record-breaking laser was called “Nkalakatha”, a word meaning “big boss”, and this discovery was made by an international team of astronomers led by Dr. Marcin Glowacki at the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research ( ICRAR) in Western Australia.
Dr. Glowicki said the “space laser” megamaser containing one atom of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen was discovered on the first night of a survey that included more than 3,000 hours of observations by the Meerkat telescope.
“This is the first hydroxyl megamaser of its kind to be observed by Meerkat and the farthest by any telescope so far,” Glowaki added. “It is impressive that in just one night of observations, we actually found a record-breaking megamaser… It shows how good telescope”.
Dr. Glowacki explained that the megamaser usually arises when two galaxies collide violently in the universe, and inside a galaxy there is a fusion of hydroxyl molecules, consisting of one atom of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. When one molecule absorbs a photon with a wavelength of 18 cm, it emits two photons of the same wavelength.