If a wormhole ever collapsed, it would send a massive shockwave through space-time that would ripple through everything.
April 2, 2026
Original Paper
Wormhole Dynamics: Nonlinear Collapse and Gravitational-Wave Emission
arXiv · 2604.00071
The Takeaway
Wormholes are theoretically unstable, but this 3D simulation reveals what happens when one actually fails. Instead of simply vanishing, the collapse triggers a violent rebound of 'phantom matter' that launches a unique gravitational wave signal that could be detected by instruments on Earth.
From the abstract
We present 3D numerical-relativity evolutions of the unstable Ellis-Bronnikov wormhole using GRTeclyn, starting from exact isotropic initial data for the coupled Einstein-phantom-scalar system. With a flat initial lapse (alpha=1) and full phantom support, truncation-level noise eventually drives the rarefactive instability and rapid throat expansion. To force a clean collapse while breaking spherical symmetry, we reduce the phantom stress-energy support to S_support=0.5 and add a quadrupolar sca