No one has ever created or observed a wormhole, and no known natural or technological process can make one a person could travel through. Wormholes exist as mathematical solutions to Einstein’s general relativity. A traversable one would need “exotic matter” that breaks a basic energy condition, and nothing known can supply that in the amounts a usable throat would need.

That does not make the question empty. Physicists study wormholes because they test the limits of relativity and quantum theory. The useful answer is to separate what the equations allow from what has actually been measured.

Key facts about wormholes

  • Observed wormholes: none. There is no observational evidence for macroscopic wormholes.
  • First wormhole-like solution: the Einstein–Rosen “bridge” (1935), which pinches off too quickly for anything to cross
  • Traversable design: Morris and Thorne (1988) showed what a crossable wormhole would require, including exotic matter that violates the null energy condition
  • Real negative energy: the Casimir effect is measured, but it is tiny, about 1.3 thousandths of a pascal between ideal plates 1 micrometre apart
  • 2022 “wormhole” experiment: a nine-qubit quantum simulation of a theoretical model, not a hole in space, and its interpretation is disputed

What is a wormhole?

A wormhole is a hypothetical tunnel-like shape in spacetime: a narrow “throat” connecting two distant regions, or possibly two separate universes. In principle, a path through the throat could be shorter than the ordinary route through space.

In 1935 Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen published a solution in which physical space has two identical “sheets” joined by a “bridge.” They were trying to model elementary particles without singularities, not to design a passage for travel. The word “wormhole” came later, in a 1957 paper by Charles Misner and John Wheeler.

Can anything travel through an Einstein–Rosen bridge?

No. In modern terms, the neutral Einstein–Rosen bridge is part of the full mathematical description of a non-rotating black hole. Its throat is not static. It opens and closes again so quickly that nothing, not even light, can get from one side to the other before it pinches off.

So the most famous “wormhole” in physics is not a shortcut. Our guide to how black holes form explains the black-hole side of this geometry.

What would it take to build a traversable wormhole?

In 1988 Michael Morris and Kip Thorne asked a different question: what do the laws of physics permit? They started from the wormhole shape they wanted, one with a throat that stays open and no event horizon, and then calculated what kind of matter would have to produce it.

The answer was troubling. To keep the throat flaring open, general relativity requires material that violates the null energy condition. Put simply, ordinary matter, which focuses light rays together through gravity, cannot do the job. The throat needs something that defocuses them, such as negative energy density or an enormous tension greater than its energy density. Physicists call this exotic matter.

Exotic matter is not the same as dark matter or antimatter. Antimatter has ordinary positive energy. Exotic matter is a label for whatever could violate the energy conditions, and no known substance does this in bulk.

Does negative energy actually exist?

Yes, in small, carefully arranged quantum situations. The best-known example is the Casimir effect. Two uncharged metal surfaces placed very close together in a vacuum are pushed toward each other because the gap limits which quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field can exist between them. The energy density in the gap is lower than in the surrounding vacuum, which counts as negative. In 1997 Steve Lamoreaux measured the force at separations of 0.6 to 6 micrometres and found agreement with theory at the 5% level.

Worked calculation: how strong is the Casimir push?

For two ideal, perfectly conducting plates separated by a distance d, the attractive pressure is:

P = π²ħc / (240 d⁴)

  • ħc ≈ (1.0546 × 10−34 J s) × (2.998 × 108 m/s) ≈ 3.16 × 10−26 J m
  • At d = 1 μm = 10−6 m, d⁴ = 10−24 m⁴
  • P ≈ (9.87 × 3.16 × 10−26) ÷ (240 × 10−24) ≈ 1.3 × 10−3 Pa

That is about one hundred-millionth of Earth’s sea-level air pressure (101,325 Pa). The effect grows steeply as the gap shrinks, but only at sub-micrometre scales.

The size is not the only problem. In the 1990s Larry Ford and Thomas Roman derived “quantum inequalities” that limit how large negative energy can be and how long it can last. Applied to Morris–Thorne wormholes, they implied either a throat only slightly larger than the Planck length (about 10−35 m) or extreme mismatches between the wormhole’s length scales. Ford and Roman concluded that macroscopic traversable wormholes are very improbable, although other researchers note the inequalities constrain rather than strictly forbid them.

Could dark energy hold a wormhole open?

Probably not in its simplest form. Dark energy is not imaginary. In 1998 two independent teams of astronomers studying distant supernovae found that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. NASA estimates that about 68 to 70% of the universe is dark energy. What remains unknown is its physical nature.

The simplest description of dark energy, a cosmological constant, does not violate the null energy condition, so it cannot support a wormhole. Theorists such as Francisco Lobo (2005) have shown that a hypothetical variant called phantom energy, with an equation-of-state parameter w below −1, would violate it and could, in models, support traversable wormholes. Whether phantom energy exists is an open question.

Did Google’s quantum computer create a wormhole in 2022?

No. In a 2022 Nature paper, Daniel Jafferis, Maria Spiropulu and colleagues ran a nine-qubit circuit, with 164 two-qubit gates, on Google’s Sycamore quantum processor. They used machine learning to build a heavily simplified version of a quantum model, the Sachdev–Ye–Kitaev (SYK) model.

Through a theoretical idea called holography, that model is mathematically “dual” to a toy gravity theory in which a traversable wormhole exists. Google’s own description says the team “constructed a quantum system that is dual to a traversable wormhole.” No gravity, and no hole in space, existed inside the chip. The experiment simulated how quantum information moves in a system that, on paper, corresponds to wormhole dynamics.

The interpretation is also contested. In 2023 Bryce Kobrin, Thomas Schuster and Norman Yao argued that the learned model does not thermalize and that its key “wormhole” signal is a generic feature of small, simple models. For more on what these machines can and cannot do, see what quantum computing is useful for.

The wider idea behind the experiment, Juan Maldacena and Leonard Susskind’s 2013 “ER = EPR” proposal, suggests that entangled particles might be connected by microscopic Einstein–Rosen bridges. It is a conjecture about quantum gravity, not a construction method.

Which wormhole ideas are real, and which are speculation?

IdeaWhat it isEvidence statusMain obstacle
Einstein–Rosen bridge (1935)Solution of Einstein’s equationsMathematical solutionPinches off; cannot be crossed
Morris–Thorne wormhole (1988)Traversable wormhole geometryMathematical solutionRequires exotic matter
Casimir effectMeasured negative energy density between platesObserved (1997 measurement)Far too small and limited by quantum inequalities
Spacetime foamWheeler’s idea that spacetime may fluctuate at the Planck scale, possibly forming tiny wormholesSpeculativeNeeds a theory of quantum gravity; untested
Phantom energyHypothetical form of dark energy with w < −1HypotheticalNot known to exist
Cosmic stringsHypothetical thin defects left over from the early universeNot detected; Planck data set only upper limitsGott (1991) linked passing strings to time-travel loops, not wormholes
Microscopic black holes at the LHCPossible only if large extra dimensions existSearched for; none foundWould be black holes, not wormholes
ER = EPR (2013)Proposed link between entanglement and bridgesConjectureUntested; not a way to build anything
Sycamore experiment (2022)Quantum simulation of a holographic modelSimulation; interpretation disputedNo physical wormhole involved

Sources: Einstein and Rosen (1935); Morris and Thorne (1988) and Ford–Roman results as reviewed by Lobo (2016); Lamoreaux (1997); Lobo (2005); Planck Collaboration (2013 results); Gott (1991); CMS Collaboration (2025); Maldacena and Susskind (2013); Jafferis et al. (2022); Kobrin et al. (2023). Full links below.

The CMS experiment at CERN reported in 2025 that its full 2016–2018 dataset showed no evidence for microscopic black holes and excluded them below roughly 9 to 11.4 TeV, depending on the model.

Is the Alcubierre warp drive a kind of wormhole?

No. Miguel Alcubierre’s 1994 warp-drive solution is a different spacetime geometry. It would contract space ahead of a ship and expand it behind, and Alcubierre’s paper presents it as working “without the introduction of wormholes.” It shares the same weakness, though: it would also need exotic matter. Our article on how fast we can travel in space with current technology covers warp drives alongside real propulsion.

Would a wormhole be a time machine?

Possibly, which is one reason physicists doubt they can exist. In 1988 Morris, Thorne and Ulvi Yurtsever argued that if a civilisation could build and maintain a traversable wormhole, it could convert it into a time machine. In 1992 Stephen Hawking proposed the chronology protection conjecture: quantum effects would grow so large as a time machine formed that they would likely prevent it. That remains a conjecture, but it adds to the reasons to treat buildable wormholes with scepticism.

What scientists don’t know yet

  • Quantum gravity. No tested theory combines general relativity with quantum mechanics, and that theory is needed to judge spacetime foam, ER = EPR and Planck-scale wormholes.
  • Large-scale energy-condition violation. Physicists do not know whether any physical system can violate the null energy condition enough, and for long enough, to hold open a large throat.
  • Dark energy’s nature. If it turned out to be phantom-like, wormhole models would be revisited, but there is no evidence for that yet.

For now, the honest answer is that physics allows wormholes on paper, sets steep requirements for crossing one, and offers no observation and no method for making one.

Related reading

Update note: This article was substantially revised on October 12, 2026. The “7 ways to create a wormhole” framing was replaced with an evidence-based answer. The Alcubierre warp drive is no longer presented as a wormhole method. The incorrect claim that dark energy has no experimental evidence was corrected. The 2022 Sycamore experiment is now described as a disputed quantum simulation, and the cosmic-string and micro-black-hole sections now reflect published results. An evidence-status table and sources were added. It was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources listed below.

Sources

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