{"id":633314,"date":"2026-10-17T09:32:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T09:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/633314\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T09:32:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T09:32:10","slug":"physicists-simulated-what-might-happen-when-two-wormholes-collide-and-things-got-weird-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/633314\/","title":{"rendered":"Physicists Simulated What Might Happen When Two Wormholes Collide, And Things Got Weird : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like the surface of an ocean, the fabric of the Universe is constantly rippling with an infinitude of gravitational waves<\/a>, propagating outward across the cosmos.<\/p>\n

We can count, in triple digits, the number of these ripples we’ve detected to date \u2013 and most of them have been linked to collisions between black holes<\/a>, the densest objects in the Universe.<\/p>\n

But how do we know that every collision attributed to black holes is what it looks like? And what of the gravitational wave<\/a> signatures we are yet to detect?<\/p>\n

What if there’s something else out there that can make the Universe sing? What if colliding wormholes can make a similar splash \u2013 and how would we recognize it when we find it?<\/p>\n

For one particular kind of wormhole, at least, new simulations suggest collisions would be profoundly strange \u2013 and could leave distinctive signatures in the fabric of spacetime.<\/p>\n

According to a preprint<\/a> authored by physicist Nikita M. Shirokov of Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and machine learning<\/a> engineer Ilya Nachevsky of the Higher School of Economics in Russia, several things can happen when binary Ellis-Bronnikov wormholes interact \u2013 and most of them are extremely weird.<\/p>\n

When you think of wormholes, you probably think first of science fiction \u2013 jump gates, hyperspace, tunnels through the cosmic backrooms that provide a shortcut from one region to another.<\/p>\n

But, like many of the ideas presented in Star Trek and The Expanse, wormholes are firmly rooted in real scientific theory \u2013 a mathematical possibility emerging from Einstein’s theory of general relativity<\/a>, which describes gravity as the curvature of spacetime.<\/p>\n

In theory, spacetime could be curved in such a way that two otherwise distant regions are connected by a tunnel, or throat \u2013 that’s a wormhole.<\/p>\n

Whether such a structure could actually exist in the Universe remains an open question.<\/p>\n

You’ve probably heard the term Einstein-Rosen bridge. That’s a type of wormhole that is non-traversable. A different model is the Ellis-Bronnikov wormhole \u2013 a traversable passage held open by something called a phantom scalar field.<\/p>\n

This hypothetical field has unusual negative-energy properties that prevent the throat from pinching shut.<\/p>\n

Traversable means something could go through it, but it does not mean stable, so whether a human should go through it is another matter.<\/p>\n

This is particularly true for Ellis-Bronnikov wormholes.<\/p>\n

Although the phantom scalar field can hold a wormhole’s throat open, even a small disturbance can upset the delicate balance. The throat may collapse, forming a black hole<\/a>, or begin expanding in a runaway process called inflation.<\/p>\n

So you’d expect that if two of these volatile structures somehow cross paths, something pretty spectacularly destructive might happen.<\/p>\n

\"PhysicistsThe different possible fates of Ellis\u2013Bronnikov wormholes, including collapse into black holes, runaway expansion, scattering, and the formation of a common horizon around two wormhole throats. (Shirokov & Nachevsky, arXiv, 2026)<\/p>\n

To find out what those fireworks might look like, Shirokov and Nachevsky ran three-dimensional simulations of pairs of Ellis-Bronnikov wormholes, varying their initial separation, trajectories, and the properties of the phantom scalar fields that hold them open.<\/p>\n

The results were surprisingly diverse.<\/p>\n

Depending on the configuration, the wormholes could attract or repel one another. Some passed close enough to interact before flying apart, their throats expanding dramatically in the process.<\/p>\n

\"YouTube frameborder=”0\u2033 allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen><\/p>\n

Others plunged towards each other \u2013 but instead of merging into one larger wormhole, something far stranger happened.<\/p>\n

A common apparent horizon \u2013 similar to a black hole’s event horizon \u2013 formed around both throats, enclosing them together inside a developing black hole.<\/p>\n

\"YouTube frameborder=”0\u2033 allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen><\/p>\n

This is where things got even weirder \u2013 because that apparent horizon then did something that black hole horizons aren’t supposed to do.<\/p>\n

It shrank.<\/p>\n

As the phantom scalar field fell into the collapsing region of space, the horizon lost about 28 percent of its area.<\/p>\n

Under ordinary circumstances, the surface area of a black hole’s event horizon can only increase or stay the same, according to the black hole area theorem<\/a> proposed by Stephen Hawking<\/a> in 1971.<\/p>\n

But that theorem relies on assumptions about the behavior of energy that the phantom scalar field violates. Its exotic negative-energy properties allow the simulated horizon to shrink rather than grow.<\/p>\n

This doesn’t contradict the area theorem, since the simulation involves an apparent horizon rather than an event horizon, and a field that violates the theorem’s assumptions. But it’s still a striking result.<\/p>\n

Now, at this point, you’re probably wondering what all this has to do with gravitational waves.<\/p>\n

When massive objects such as black holes spiral inward toward a collision, their changing motion sends ripples through spacetime, like a boat’s wake on the ocean. That’s what gravitational waves are.<\/p>\n

Wormholes, at least the massive Ellis-Bronnikov wormholes modeled in this study, should also generate gravitational waves as they move and interact.<\/p>\n

But the researchers found that the resulting signals would be quite different from those produced by a pair of black holes spiraling toward each other.<\/p>\n

The spiraling black hole pair has a distinctive signal called a chirp that grows stronger and higher in frequency as the two objects draw closer together.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the researchers’ simulations of wormhole encounters produced short, sharp bursts of gravitational waves.<\/p>\n

The signal’s precise shape and strength depended on whether the wormholes plunged toward each other or merely grazed each other in passing.<\/p>\n

\"YouTube frameborder=”0\u2033 allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen><\/p>\n

Interestingly, some of the closest flybys produced particularly strong gravitational-wave bursts, even without the formation of a common apparent horizon.<\/p>\n

This doesn’t mean that a gravitational-wave burst without a chirp is evidence of wormholes. Black holes can also produce such signals under certain circumstances.<\/p>\n

One particularly unusual signal, GW190521, was detected in 2019 and has since been investigated<\/a> as a possible signature of exotic spacetime physics.<\/p>\n

That doesn’t mean it was produced by a wormhole, and the new simulations don’t establish a connection to that event. But it illustrates why understanding the possible signatures of hypothetical objects is worthwhile.<\/p>\n

There’s another catch, though. The researchers note that wormholes formed in the early Universe would produce signals stretched by cosmic expansion to frequencies far below those detectable by gravitational-wave observatories such as LIGO and the planned LISA mission.<\/p>\n

For these particular signals to be detectable, the wormholes would need to form much later in cosmic history \u2013 and scientists don’t currently know how that could happen.<\/p>\n

Still, the Universe has surprised us before. And now, if we somehow do manage to record the signal of an Ellis-Bronnikov wormhole collision, we’ll have a better idea of what we might be looking at.<\/p>\n

The research, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, is available on preprint server arXiv<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article was fact-checked by Fiona MacDonald<\/a> and edited by Fiona MacDonald<\/a>. While we pride ourselves on our process, we are only human. If you spot a mistake, please let us know<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like the surface of an ocean, the fabric of the Universe is constantly rippling with an infinitude of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[1021,111,139,69,393,147],"class_list":["post-633314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-msft-content","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-physics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}