A powerful radio-wave laser, called a \u2018megamaser\u2019, has been observed by the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa.<\/p>\n
The record-breaking find is the most distant megamaser of its kind ever detected, at about five billion light years from Earth.<\/p>\n
The light from the megamaser has travelled 58 thousand billion billion (58 followed by 21 zeros) kilometres to Earth.<\/p>\n
The discovery was made by an international team of astronomers led by Dr Marcin Glowacki, who previously worked at the Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy and the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.<\/p>\n
Dr Glowacki, who is now based at the Â鶹ֱ²¥ node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Western Australia, said megamasers are usually created when two galaxies violently collide in the Universe.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen galaxies collide, the gas they contain becomes extremely dense and can trigger concentrated beams of light to shoot out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the first hydroxyl megamaser to be observed by MeerKAT and the most distant seen by any telescope to date.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s impressive that, with just a single night of observations, we\u2019ve already found a record-breaking megamaser. It shows just how good the telescope is.\u201d<\/p>\n
The record-breaking object was named \u2018Nkalakatha\u2019 [pronounced ng-kuh-la-kuh-tah]\u2014an isiZulu word meaning \u201cbig boss\u201d.<\/p>\n
Dr Glowacki said the megamaser was detected on the first night of a survey involving more than 3000 hours of observations by the MeerKAT telescope.<\/p>\n
The team is using MeerKAT to observe narrow regions of the sky extremely deeply and will measure atomic hydrogen\u00a0in galaxies from the distant past to now. The combination of studying hydroxl masers\u00a0and hydrogen will help astronomers better understand how the Universe has evolved over time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have follow-up observations of the megamaser planned and hope to make many more discoveries,\u201d Dr Glowacki said.<\/p>\n
MeerKAT is a precursor instrument for the Square Kilometre Array\u2014a global initiative to build the world\u2019s largest radio telescopes in Western Australia and South Africa.<\/p>\n