Megamaser be very different from those that produce galactic water masers. Observations of water megamasers have been used to make accurate measurements of distances to galaxies in order to provide constraints on the Hubble constant. The word maser derives from the acronym MASER, which stands for "Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation". The maser is a predecessor to lasers, which operate at optical wavelengths, and is named by the replacement of "microwave" with "light". Given a system of atoms or molecules, each with different energy states, an atom or molecule may absorb a photon and move to a higher energy
Stimulated emission field, and which acts like a small electric dipole, and this dipole oscillates at a characteristic frequency. In response to the external electric field at this frequency, the probability of the electron entering this transition state is greatly increased. Thus, the rate of transitions between two stationary states is increased beyond that of spontaneous emission. A transition from the higher to a lower energy state produces an additional photon with the same phase and direction as the incident photon; this is the process of stimulated emission. Stimulated emission was a theoretical discovery by Einstein within the framework of the old