{"id":243821,"date":"2026-09-09T01:30:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T06:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/a-photon-that-challenges-einstein-according-to-current-physics-it-should-never-have-reached-earth"},"modified":"2026-09-09T01:30:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T06:30:43","slug":"a-photon-that-challenges-einstein-according-to-current-physics-it-should-never-have-reached-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/a-photon-that-challenges-einstein-according-to-current-physics-it-should-never-have-reached-earth","title":{"rendered":"A photon that challenges Einstein: According to current physics, it should never have reached Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-photon-that-challenges-einstein-according-to-current-physics-it-should-never-have-reached-earth.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>How did a photon survive a journey of more than 2 billion light-years when, according to known physics, it should have been absorbed long before reaching Earth? This is the question at the heart of a new study by Giorgio Galanti (INAF) and Marco Roncadelli (INFN), accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters.<\/p>\n<p>The research addresses one of the most fascinating puzzles in contemporary astrophysics. It proposes a possible explanation for the highest-energy photon ever observed from a gamma-ray burst, suggesting that under extreme conditions spacetime may behave differently from what Einstein\u2019s theory of relativity predicts.<\/p>\n<p>At the center of the story is the brightest gamma-ray burst ever observed, GRB 221009A, nicknamed BOAT by astronomers\u2014the Brightest Of All Time. The explosion, which occurred about 2 billion light-years from Earth and was observed on Oct. 9, 2022, reached our planet as an enormous shower of photons, the elementary particles of light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How did a photon survive a journey of more than 2 billion light-years when, according to known physics, it should have been absorbed long before reaching Earth? This is the question at the heart of a new study by Giorgio Galanti (INAF) and Marco Roncadelli (INFN), accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters. The research [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}