A razor-thin spike of radio light, tuned to a wavelength of about 18 centimeters, just traveled more than 8 billion light-years and still arrived loud enough to stand out in MeerKAT’s data. That signal comes from HATLAS J142935.3–002836, also called H1429-0028, a violently merging, gas-rich system at redshift z = 1.027. In new MeerKAT observations, astronomers detected hydroxyl (OH) maser emission from the galaxy, making it the highest-redshift hydroxyl megamaser yet found. The team’s paper has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, with a preprint posted on arXiv. A “space laser” that works in radio Hydroxyl megamasers are sometimes described as “space lasers,” but they operate at radio frequencies rather than visible light. The basic idea is still familiar: you need the right conditions to invert a molecular population so that passing photons get amplified into a bright, coherent signal. Left: Hubble Space Telescope near-infrared (F160W) image of H1429-0028, including the foreground disk lens. Right: Calanog et al. (2014) lens model of H1429-0028, oriented with north at the …