  Recent findings by Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes indicate a large
transparency of the Universe to gamma rays, which can be hardly explained
within the current models of extragalactic background light. We show that the
observed transparency is naturally produced by an oscillation mechanism --
which can occur inside intergalactic magnetic fields -- whereby a photon can
become a new spin-zero boson with mass m << 10^(-10) eV. Because the latter
particle travels unimpeded throughout the Universe, photons can reach the
observer even if the distance from the source considerably exceeds their mean
free path. We compute the expected flux of gamma rays from blazar 3C279 at
different energies. Our predictions can be tested in the near future by the
gamma-ray telescopes H.E.S.S., MAGIC, CANGAROO and VERITAS. Moreover, our
result provides an important observational test for models of dark energy
wherein quintessence is coupled to the photon through an effective
dimension-five operator.
