Did Our Universe Begin Through a Giant Cosmic Wormhole? Scientists Discover a Fascinating New Possibility

How did our universe begin? This is one of the biggest questions in science. We know that the universe started with the Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago. Soon after, it went through a period of incredibly fast expansion called cosmic inflation. But scientists still don't know what caused the universe to come into existence in the first place.

A new study by physicists Janna Lavrelashvili and Jean-Luc Lehners offers an exciting idea. Their research suggests that our universe may have been born through a special type of wormhole. If this idea is correct, tiny clues from that event could still be visible today in the oldest light in the universe.

What Is a Wormhole?

Many people know wormholes from science fiction movies, where they are shown as shortcuts through space. However, the wormholes in this study are very different.

These are theoretical structures predicted by the laws of physics. Instead of connecting two distant places in space, they may connect an old universe to a newly created one.

The researchers studied a special kind called a wineglass wormhole. It gets its name because its shape looks like half of a wineglass. One end opens into an existing universe, the middle becomes narrow like the stem of a glass, and the other end expands into a brand-new universe.

Scientists believe this shape could allow a baby universe to form and then grow into a full-sized universe like ours.

A Baby Universe Is Born

According to the study, a new universe could appear through a strange process called quantum tunneling.

Quantum physics allows very unusual events to happen. Tiny particles can sometimes pass through barriers that should be impossible to cross. Scientists think the same idea might apply on a much larger scale.

Instead of particles, an entire universe could suddenly appear through quantum tunneling.

The new universe would first be very tiny. Then, almost immediately, it would enter a period of extremely rapid growth called inflation.

During inflation, the universe expands faster than the speed of light—not because objects move faster than light, but because space itself stretches. This explains why the universe today is so huge, smooth, and nearly flat.

What Happens to Tiny Quantum Fluctuations?

The researchers wanted to answer another important question.

When a universe is born through one of these wormholes, what happens to the tiny quantum fluctuations that later become galaxies, stars, and planets?

Everything in today's universe started as tiny quantum ripples.

As inflation stretched space, these tiny ripples also became larger. Over billions of years, gravity pulled matter together around these ripples, eventually forming galaxies, stars, planets, and everything we see today.

So understanding these early fluctuations is very important.

The Standard Picture

Most cosmologists assume these fluctuations started in what is called the Bunch-Davies vacuum.

Although the name sounds complicated, the idea is simple.

Imagine a perfectly calm lake with almost no waves. The Bunch-Davies vacuum is similar. It is the quietest and lowest-energy state that quantum fields can have during inflation.

This assumption has worked well because it matches many observations of the universe.

But until now, scientists did not know whether a universe created through a wormhole would naturally begin in this same state.

The Surprising Discovery

The new calculations gave an interesting answer.

The researchers found that small-scale fluctuations behave almost exactly as expected.

These tiny fluctuations are so small that they hardly notice the wormhole at all. They begin in nearly the same Bunch-Davies vacuum used in standard cosmology.

However, the story changes for large-scale fluctuations.

These waves are so large that they can "feel" the shape of the wormhole during the universe's birth.

Because of this, they do not start in a perfectly standard quantum state.

Instead, they show small differences from the usual Bunch-Davies vacuum.

Tiny Changes That Could Be Seen Today

These differences are extremely small, but they may still be important.

The early quantum fluctuations eventually left their marks on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).

The CMB is the oldest light in the universe. It was released about 380,000 years after the Big Bang and fills the entire sky today.

Scientists have been studying this ancient light for decades because it contains information about the universe's earliest moments.

According to the new study, if our universe formed through a wineglass wormhole, the CMB should contain tiny extra patterns.

Instead of being perfectly smooth, it would show:

• Slight changes in the strength of temperature patterns.

• Small wave-like oscillations.

• Effects that appear mostly on the largest scales.

These tiny patterns could act like fingerprints left behind by the wormhole.

The Importance of Wormhole Charge

The researchers also studied something called the wormhole's charge.

This does not mean electric charge like in batteries.

Instead, it refers to special axionic or magnetic charges that help keep the wormhole stable.

The team found that the size of the predicted signals depends on this charge.

If the charge is large, the differences become stronger.

If the charge is small, the differences become much weaker.

Finally, when the charge becomes zero, the differences disappear completely.

This means that the standard picture of inflation is naturally recovered when the wormhole charge is absent.

A Smooth Transformation

One of the most interesting discoveries came when the researchers studied wormholes with almost no charge.

As the charge decreases, the narrow middle part of the wormhole becomes thinner and thinner.

Eventually, it disappears completely.

At that point, the wormhole splits into two separate pieces.

One part becomes ordinary space, while the other becomes something called a no-boundary instanton, another famous idea about how the universe could have begun.

This shows that wormholes and no-boundary models may actually be closely related instead of being completely different theories.

Even more importantly, the researchers found that the tiny quantum fluctuations remain stable during this change.

Nothing strange or unstable happens as the wormhole disappears.

Can We Test This Idea?

The biggest question is whether these tiny signals can actually be detected.

The answer depends on how long inflation lasted.

If inflation continued for a very long time, then the largest affected waves would now be far beyond the part of the universe we can see.

In that case, we would not be able to detect them today.

However, if inflation lasted only as long as necessary, then some of these signals might still be visible in the cosmic microwave background.

Interestingly, astronomers have already found a few unusual features in the largest patterns of the CMB.

Scientists are not yet sure whether these are simply random fluctuations or signs of new physics.

Future space missions with more precise instruments may help answer this question.

Looking Ahead

The researchers say much more work is still needed.

Their study focused on only some types of quantum fields. They now want to study the fields that actually create and support the wormhole itself.

This is mathematically much more difficult, but solving it could provide an even clearer picture of how baby universes might form.

If future observations match these predictions, it would completely change our understanding of the universe's birth.

Instead of beginning from nothing, our universe may have started as a tiny baby universe emerging through a quantum wormhole, carrying faint but detectable clues about its extraordinary origin.

Reference: George Lavrelashvili, Jean-Luc Lehners, "Quantum States Prepared by Wormholes: Long-Wavelength Deviations from Bunch-Davies", Arxiv, 2026. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.12772