A cosmic particle reached Earth against all odds. Scientists think they know why

On October 9, 2022, astronomers detected a 300 teraelectronvolts photon from gamma-ray burst GRB 221009A, 2 billion light-years away. Standard physics says it should have been destroyed by collisions with cosmic microwave background photons. Researchers propose axion-like particles or Lorentz invariance violation allowed survival, predicting a one-hour delay perfectly matching observations from LHAASO.

How did this photon survive a journey that, according to known physics, should have destroyed it?