If you saw a wormhole in reality, it would appear round, spherical, a bit like a black hole. Light from the other side passes through and gives you a window to a faraway place. Once crossed, the other side comes fully into view with your old home now receding into that shimmering spherical window. But are wormholes real, or are they just magic disguised as physics and maths? If they are real, how do they work, and where can we find them? For most of human history, we thought space was pretty simple. A big flat stage where the events of the universe unfold. Even if you take down the set of planets and stars, there's still something left. That empty stage is space, and it exists, unchanging and eternal. Einstein's theory of relativity changed that. It says that space and time make up that stage together, and they aren't the same everywhere. The things on the stage can affect the stage itself, stretching and warping it. If the old stage was like unmoving hardwood, Einstein's stage is more like a waterbed. This kind of elastic space can be bent and maybe even torn and patched together, which could make wormholes possible. Let's see what that would look like in 2D. Our universe is like a big flat sheet. Bent in just the right way, wormholes could connect two very, very distant spots with a short bridge that you could cross almost instantaneously, enabling you to travel the universe even faster than the speed of light. So, where can we find a wormhole? Presently, only on paper. General relativity says they might be possible, but that doesn't mean they have to exist. General relativity is a mathematical theory. It's a set of equations that have many possible answers, but not all maths describes reality. But they are theoretically possible, and there are different kinds. The first kind of wormholes to be theorized were Einstein-Rosen bridges. They describe every black hole as a sort of portal to an infinite parallel universe. Let's try to picture them in 2D again. Empty spacetime is flat, but curved by objects on it. If we compress that object, spacetime gets more curved around it. Eventually, spacetime becomes so warped that it has no choice but to collapse into a black hole. A one-way barrier forms, the event horizon, which anything can enter, but nothing can escape, trapped forever at the singularity at its core. But maybe there is no singularity here. One possibility is that the other side of the event horizon looks a bit like our universe again, but mirrored upside down, where time runs backwards. In our universe, things fall into the black hole. In the parallel universe with backwards time, the mirrored black hole is spewing things out, a bit like a big bang. This is called a white hole. Unfortunately, Einstein-Rosen bridges can't actually be crossed. It takes an infinite amount of time to cross over to the opposite universe, and they crimp shut in the middle. If you go into a black hole, you won't become the stuff coming out of the white hole, you'll only become dead. So, to travel the cosmos in the blink of an eye, humans need a different kind of wormhole, a traversable wormhole. If string theory or one of its variations is the correct description of our universe, then we could be lucky, and our universe might even have a tangled web of countless wormholes already. Shortly after the Big Bang, quantum fluctuations in the universe at the smallest scales, far, far smaller than an atom, may have created many, many traversable wormholes. Threaded through them are strings called cosmic strings. In the first billionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, the ends of these tiny, tiny wormholes were pulled light years apart, scattering them through the universe. If wormholes were made in the early universe, whether with cosmic strings or some other way, they could be all over, just waiting to be discovered. One might even be closer than we realize. From the outside, black holes and wormholes can look very similar, leading some physicists to suggest the supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies are actually wormholes. It will be very hard to go all the way to the center of the Milky Way to find out though, but that's okay. There might be an equally extremely hard way to get our hands on a wormhole. We could try to make one. To be traversable and useful, there are a few properties we want a wormhole to have. First, it must obviously connect two distant parts of spacetime, like your bedroom and the bathroom, or Earth and Jupiter. Second, it should not contain any event horizons, which would block two-way travel. Third, it should be sufficiently sized so that the gravitational forces don't kill human travelers. The biggest problem we have to solve is keeping our wormholes open. No matter how we make wormholes, gravity tries to close them. Gravity wants to pinch it closed and cut the bridge, leaving only black holes at the ends. Whether it's a traversable wormhole with both ends in ours, or a wormhole to another universe, it will try to close unless we have something propping it open. For very old string theory wormholes, that's the cosmic string's job. For man-made wormholes, we need a new ingredient: exotic matter. This isn't anything like we find on Earth or even antimatter. It's something totally new and different and exciting with crazy properties like nothing that's ever been seen before. Exotic matter is stuff that has negative mass. Positive mass, like people and planets and everything else in the universe, is attractive because of gravity. But negative mass would be repulsive. It would push you away. This makes a kind of anti-gravity that props open our wormholes. And exotic matter must exert enormous pressure to push spacetime open, greater even than the pressure at the centers of neutron stars. With exotic matter, we could weave spacetime however we see fit. We may even have a candidate for this exotic matter: the vacuum of space itself. Quantum fluctuations in empty space are constantly creating pairs of particles and antiparticles, only for them to be annihilated an instant later. The vacuum of space is boiling with them, and we can already manipulate them to produce an effect similar to the negative mass we're looking for. We could use this to stabilize our wormholes. Once we're keeping it open, the ends would start together, so we'd have to move them around to interesting places. We could start by wiring the solar system, leaving one end of each wormhole in orbit around the Earth. We could fling others into deep space. The Earth could be a wormhole hub for a vast interstellar human civilization, spread over light-years, but only a wormhole away. However, wormholes have a dark side. Even opening a single wormhole kind of breaks the universe in fundamental ways, potentially creating time travel paradoxes and violating the causal structure of the universe. Many scientists think that this not only means they should be impossible to make, but that it's impossible for them to exist at all. So for now, we only know that wormholes exist in our hearts and on paper in the form of equations.
An animated character in a purple and white astronaut suit stands in a yellow room. A swirling, colorful wormhole appears in the window frame.
"If you saw a wormhole in reality, it would appear round, spherical, a bit like a black hole."
Setting: child's bedroom — bright, warm, coming from an unseen source
People (1):
• standing, looking at the window, wearing purple and white spacesuit and purple pants, brown hair — neutral, obscured by helmet
A first-person view from the astronaut's perspective. The hands reach out and open the green curtains, revealing the swirling wormhole. The view then plunges through the wormhole.
"Light from the other side passes through and gives you a window to a faraway place."
Setting: outer space — dark, with points of light from stars
People (1):
• moving forward, wearing purple spacesuit sleeves, not visible hair — not visible
The first-person view looks back through the wormhole, which now shows the child's bedroom receding and distorting.
"Once crossed, the other side comes fully into view with your old home now receding into that shimmering spherical window."
Setting: outer space — dark, illuminated by the wormhole and stars
People (1):
• floating, wearing purple spacesuit sleeves, not visible hair — not visible
The astronaut character floats in a purple, grid-like space. Colorful mathematical symbols and equations appear and float around them.
"But are wormholes real, or are they just magic disguised as physics and maths?"
Setting: abstract mathematical space — neon, ambient glow from symbols and background
People (1):
• floating, legs slightly bent, wearing purple spacesuit and purple pants, not visible hair — neutral, a reflection of a wormhole is visible in the visor
The Kurzgesagt intro sequence plays, showing the Earth with the moon orbiting it. The view zooms out to show the Earth as a small circle.
Setting: space near Earth — stylized, bright
Text: "kurzgesagt", "in collaboration with", "BRILLIANT"
A colorful parrot-like bird with a party hat walks onto an isometric stage with a purple chevron floor and red curtains. Three pedestals display a sun, Earth, and moon. Other birds appear.
"For most of human history, we thought space was pretty simple. A big flat stage where the events of the universe unfold."
Setting: theatrical stage — stage lighting from above
Text: "UNIVERSE"
The birds and celestial bodies disappear from the stage. The curtains are pulled away, and the pedestals vanish one by one, leaving only the empty purple chevron-patterned floor against a magenta background.
"That empty stage is space, and it exists, unchanging and eternal."
Setting: abstract space — soft, ambient
Text: "SPACE"
The chevron pattern on the stage floor dissolves and re-forms into a 3D grid structure with a pink floor grid and blue wall grids.
"Einstein's theory of relativity changed that."
Setting: abstract representation of spacetime — neon glow
Text: "SPACE"
A yellow sphere (sun) and smaller spheres (planets) appear on the pink grid, causing it to bend and warp downwards around them. A purple bird wearing a helmet lands on the sun.
"The things on the stage can affect the stage itself, stretching and warping it."
Setting: abstract representation of spacetime — neon glow
Text: "SPACE"
A split-screen comparison. On the left, an old CRT computer sits on a rigid wooden stage labeled "Old Stage". On the right, a similar object sits on a flexible, water-like blue stage labeled "New Stage", causing it to indent.
"If the old stage was like unmoving hardwood, Einstein's stage is more like a waterbed."
Setting: abstract comparison space — bright, clean
Text: "Old Stage", "New Stage"
The object on the right "waterbed" stage sinks deeper, causing water to splash up dramatically, illustrating the tearing and patching of spacetime.
"This kind of elastic space can be bent and maybe even torn and patched together, which could make wormholes possible."
Setting: abstract comparison space — bright, clean
Text: "New Stage"
A 2D grid representing spacetime is shown. It then bends into a U-shape.
"Let's see what that would look like in 2D. Our universe is like a big flat sheet."
Setting: abstract space — neon glow
The U-shaped grid morphs to form a tunnel, or wormhole, connecting the top and bottom layers of the grid.
"Bent in just the right way, wormholes could connect two very, very distant spots with a short bridge that you could cross almost instantaneously,"
Setting: abstract space — neon glow
A white particle with a yellow wave trail travels along the top layer of the grid, enters the wormhole, and instantly appears on the bottom layer, demonstrating a shortcut.
"enabling you to travel the universe even faster than the speed of light."
Setting: abstract space — neon glow
Two animated birds are in a dark room. One is on a telescope looking out a window at a starry night. The other bird flies in holding a piece of paper with a drawing of a wormhole.
"So, where can we find a wormhole? Presently, only on paper."
Setting: observatory room — dark, with neon blue and purple highlights
The scene pans right to show a third, red bird typing on a vintage computer keyboard. The computer screen displays the equation E=mc².
"General relativity says they might be possible, but that doesn't mean they have to exist."
Setting: study/office — dark, with neon blue and purple highlights
Text: "E=mc²"
Three complex mathematical equations are displayed side-by-side against a dark blue striped background. The numbers and symbols within them morph into abstract shapes and icons.
"General relativity is a mathematical theory. It's a set of equations that have many possible answers, but not all maths describes reality."
Setting: abstract background — glowing text
Text: "Various complex physics equations"
A title card with a retro, 80s-inspired design appears. The text reads "EINSTEIN ROSEN Bridges".
"But they are theoretically possible, and there are different kinds."
Setting: abstract 80s landscape — neon glow
Text: "EINSTEIN ROSEN Bridges"
An animation of a black hole with a colorful accretion disk appears against a starry magenta background. The view zooms into the center of the black hole, which transitions into a tunnel of light rays.
"The first kind of wormholes to be theorized were Einstein-Rosen bridges. They describe every black hole as a sort of portal to an infinite parallel universe."
Setting: deep space — light emanating from the accretion disk and the portal
A flat blue 2D grid appears. A glowing yellow sphere drops onto it, causing the grid to curve downwards.
"Let's try to picture them in 2D again. Empty spacetime is flat, but curved by objects on it."
Setting: abstract space — glow from the object and grid
The sphere on the grid shrinks and becomes denser, causing the warp in the grid to become an infinitely deep funnel. The view zooms down the funnel, which becomes a black hole.
"Eventually, spacetime becomes so warped that it has no choice but to collapse into a black hole."
Setting: abstract space — glow from the grid
Various animated objects, including a pineapple, a computer, a dolphin, and a crying statue, are shown falling into the black hole's event horizon.
"A one-way barrier forms, the event horizon, which anything can enter, but nothing can escape,"
Setting: near a black hole — bright, colorful
The view zooms out from the black hole to reveal it's the center of a wormhole structure, a blue, bell-shaped funnel connected to something off-screen.
"But maybe there is no singularity here."
Setting: deep space — ambient glow
A split-screen shows two mirrored wormhole funnels connected at their narrowest point. The left side is purple (our universe) and the right side is green (parallel universe). Clocks appear, showing time moving forward on the left and backward on the right.
"One possibility is that the other side of the event horizon looks a bit like our universe again, but mirrored upside down, where time runs backwards."
Setting: abstract representation of two universes — ambient glow
The split-screen view continues. On the left, objects fall into the black hole. On the right, objects are spewed out of the white hole.
"This is called a white hole."
Setting: abstract representation of two universes — ambient glow
Text: "BLACK HOLE", "WHITE HOLE"
An astronaut character in a white and purple suit floats through a colorful, streaking tunnel. Their expression changes from happy to distressed, and their body stretches and distorts (spaghettification) before disappearing.
"If you go into a black hole, you won't become the stuff coming out of the white hole, you'll only become dead."
Setting: inside a non-traversable wormhole — bright, chaotic
People (1):
• floating, then being stretched, wearing white and purple spacesuit and purple pants, not visible hair — smiling, then winking, then screaming in terror
A title card with neon text appears against a background of glowing, intersecting lines. The text reads "very old STRING THEORY Wormholes".
Setting: abstract background — neon glow
Text: "very old STRING THEORY Wormholes"
A pink wireframe sphere representing the universe is shown. It splits in half to reveal a tangled mass of colorful, noodle-like strings (wormholes) inside.
"If string theory or one of its variations is the correct description of our universe, then we could be lucky, and our universe might even have a tangled web of countless wormholes already."
Setting: abstract representation of the universe — glowing from the sphere and strings
Text: "UNIVERSE"
An animation shows two waving, ribbon-like sheets (pink and blue) representing spacetime at the quantum level, fluctuating wildly.
"Shortly after the Big Bang, quantum fluctuations in the universe at the smallest scales, far, far smaller than an atom, may have created many, many traversable wormholes."
Setting: quantum realm — soft, ambient
Text: "SPACETIME QUANTUM FLUCTUATIONS", "Planck Length (10⁻³⁵m)"
Colorful strings are shown threading through holes in the fluctuating spacetime ribbons, connecting different points.
"Threaded through them are strings called cosmic strings."
Setting: quantum realm — soft, ambient
A glowing sphere representing the early universe is shown with tangled strings inside. As it expands rapidly, the strings are stretched out across the sphere.
"In the first billionth of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, the ends of these tiny, tiny wormholes were pulled light years apart, scattering them through the universe."
Setting: the early universe — glowing from the sphere
Text: "UNIVERSE"
A bird on a telescope in a high-tech room looks out at the stars. Another bird on the windowsill caws. An "I WANT TO BELIEVE" poster is on the wall.
"If wormholes were made in the early universe, whether with cosmic strings or some other way, they could be all over, just waiting to be discovered."
Setting: observatory / control room — dim, with light from screens and a desk lamp
Text: "I WANT TO BELIEVE"
A view of the Milky Way galaxy. A circle highlights the supermassive black hole at its center, which glows and has an accretion disk.
"leading some physicists to suggest the supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies are actually wormholes."
Setting: Milky Way galaxy — bright glow from the galactic core
Text: "MILKY WAY"
A red bird with a long tail and holding a chainsaw stands on a cyan stage. It revs the chainsaw and cuts a circular hole in the floor, creating a wormhole.
"There might be an equally extremely hard way to get our hands on a wormhole. We could try to make one."
Setting: abstract stage — ambient
A title card appears with large, metallic, 80s-style text reading "MANMADE Wormholes" over a retro grid landscape.
Setting: abstract 80s landscape — neon glow
Text: "MANMADE Wormholes"
A blue and red bird flies out of a bedroom door, through a circular wormhole in a mirror, and into a bathroom on the other side of a wall.
"First, it must obviously connect two distant parts of spacetime, like your bedroom and the bathroom,"
Setting: bedroom and bathroom — bright, even
The bird flies out of a wormhole in a wall and appears in space next to the planet Jupiter, doing a backflip.
"or Earth and Jupiter."
Setting: space near Jupiter — ambient space light
A female astronaut in a colorful suit floats in front of a black hole. There are road signs next to her: a one-way arrow and a 'no U-turn' sign.
"Second, it should not contain any event horizons, which would block two-way travel."
Setting: space — ambient
People (1):
• floating, wearing cyan, pink, and white spacesuit and multi-colored pants, dark, short hair — smiling
A purple bird runs on a retro grid. It jumps through a small wormhole portal and comes out the other side as a splattered mess of colors.
"Third, it should be sufficiently sized so that the gravitational forces don't kill human travelers."
Setting: abstract 80s landscape — neon
Two wormhole portals are shown with palm trees coming out of them. A large pink hand labeled "GRAVITY" reaches down and squeezes one of the portals shut.
"No matter how we make wormholes, gravity tries to close them."
Setting: abstract 80s landscape — neon
Text: "GRAVITY"
A green bird tries to hold open a wormhole that connects two different levels of a gridded space, but it struggles as the wormhole tries to close.
"Whether it's a traversable wormhole with both ends in ours, or a wormhole to another universe, it will try to close unless we have something propping it open."
Setting: abstract space — neon
A 3D model of a wormhole is shown, with a pink cosmic string running through its center, holding it open. A label points to the string.
"For very old string theory wormholes, that's the cosmic string's job."
Setting: abstract space — ambient
Text: "Cosmic String"
A pedestal on a stage is covered by a red cloth. The cloth is whisked away to reveal a glowing white light source, representing exotic matter.
"For man-made wormholes, we need a new ingredient: exotic matter."
Setting: abstract stage — bright light from the exotic matter
Text: "Exotic Matter"
A three-panel split screen. The left panel shows a blue sphere labeled "Matter" with "+m". The right panel shows a dark purple sphere labeled "Antimatter" with "+m". The center panel shows a glowing, unstable white sphere labeled "Exotic Matter" with "-m".
"Exotic matter is stuff that has negative mass."
Setting: abstract comparison space — glowing from the spheres
Text: "Matter", "Exotic Matter", "Antimatter", "+m", "-m", "+m"
On a purple grid, a planet and moon with positive mass attract each other, warping the grid. A white sphere with negative mass appears and repels the planet and moon, pushing the grid upwards.
"But negative mass would be repulsive. It would push you away."
Setting: abstract spacetime grid — ambient
A glowing white character representing exotic matter is placed inside a black hole by two large pink hands labeled "GRAVITY". The character pushes the sides of the black hole open from the inside.
"This makes a kind of anti-gravity that props open our wormholes."
Setting: deep space — bright glow from the exotic matter
The glowing white exotic matter character dances happily, and various shapes of wormholes (star, pentagon, square, triangle) appear around it.
"With exotic matter, we could weave spacetime however we see fit."
Setting: deep space — bright glow from the character
Two birds on a stage shine spotlights on an empty spot. Roses are thrown onto the stage.
"We may even have a candidate for this exotic matter: the vacuum of space itself."
Setting: abstract stage — two spotlights creating a central bright area
A cyan particle and a dark purple antiparticle pop into existence above a grid, then collide and disappear.
"Quantum fluctuations in empty space are constantly creating pairs of particles and antiparticles, only for them to be annihilated an instant later."
Setting: quantum vacuum — ambient
Text: "Particle", "Antiparticle"
The grid representing the quantum vacuum fluctuates into many peaks and troughs. A slider appears showing a balance between negative and positive effective mass. An object with negative effective mass is shown pushing spacetime upwards.
"The vacuum of space is boiling with them, and we can already manipulate them to produce an effect similar to the negative mass we're looking for."
Setting: quantum vacuum — ambient
Text: "QUANTUM VACUUM FLUCTUATIONS", "Effective Mass"
Two wormhole openings are shown side-by-side on a grid. Dotted lines show them being moved apart to different locations on the grid.
"Once we're keeping it open, the ends would start together, so we'd have to move them around to interesting places."
Setting: abstract spacetime — ambient
A view of Earth with several ring-shaped wormhole stations orbiting it. One station shows a view of Saturn. Another shows a floating space diner. A spaceship flies past.
"We could start by wiring the solar system, leaving one end of each wormhole in orbit around the Earth. We could fling others into deep space."
Setting: Earth orbit — glow from stations and planets
A retro-style car resembling a DeLorean drives on a grid. It enters a wormhole ring and emerges in the same location, but now there are multiple crashed and broken versions of the car, creating a paradox.
"Even opening a single wormhole kind of breaks the universe in fundamental ways, potentially creating time travel paradoxes and violating the causal structure of the universe."
Setting: abstract 80s landscape — neon
Three birds are in a control room, looking at a screen showing the time travel paradox. The main bird shakes its head and presses a button, turning off the screen.
"Many scientists think that this not only means they should be impossible to make, but that it's impossible for them to exist at all."
Setting: control room — light from the computer screens
A single red bird sits on a stack of books, looking at papers with equations. One paper transforms into a swirling wormhole, and mathematical symbols float out of it.
"So for now, we only know that wormholes exist in our hearts and on paper in the form of equations."
Setting: abstract space — soft glow from the paper wormhole