Physicists in Greece propose that a dense, fluctuating population of microscopic wormholes in quantum foam could alter the Gauss-Bonnet term and produce an effective, time-varying cosmological constant. Their analysis, published in Physical Review D, shows how topology changes at tiny scales yield a nonzero variation in the Gauss-Bonnet contribution, mimicking dark energy. To match observations they estimate roughly 1016 wormholes per m³ per second; the idea is theoretically plausible but remains speculative and not yet testable.
Microscopic Wormholes May Be Warping Reality — A New Mathematical Route to Dark Energy
Physicists in Greece propose that a dense, fluctuating population of microscopic wormholes in quantum foam could alter the Gauss-Bonnet term and produce an effective, time-varying cosmological constant. Their analysis, published in Physical Review D, shows how topology changes at tiny scales yield a nonzero variation in the Gauss-Bonnet contribution, mimicking dark energy. To match observations they estimate roughly 1016 wormholes per m³ per second; the idea is theoretically plausible but remains speculative and not yet testable.
01:44 AM, 11/18/2025Science
Microscopic Wormholes May Be Warping Reality — A New Mathematical Route to Dark Energy
Researchers in Greece have proposed a mathematical framework suggesting that a vast population of microscopic, constantly forming wormholes in quantum “foam” could produce an effective, time-varying cosmological constant. Their calculations — published in the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review D — show how topology changes at tiny scales can alter the Gauss-Bonnet contribution to spacetime curvature, producing a dark-energy–like effect without invoking new exotic fields.
The problem: a huge mismatch in predicted expansion
Cosmologists face a well-known discrepancy: quantum field theory estimates for the vacuum energy (the positive cosmological constant) are many orders of magnitude larger than the value inferred from cosmological observations. The paper reiterates this gulf — often quoted as up to ~10120 ("120 orders of magnitude") — and explores whether previously neglected topological features of spacetime could bridge part of the gap.
How tiny wormholes enter the equations
At extremely small scales, spacetime may resemble a turbulent quantum foam where topology can fluctuate. In that setting, wormholes need not be traversable tunnels in the sci‑fi sense; mathematically they are local changes in topology that can be treated within manifold and topology theory. The authors show that when topology changes because of such microscopic wormholes, the variation of the Gauss-Bonnet term on the manifold is not zero. That nonzero variation can be interpreted as an emergent or "effective" cosmological constant.
“The variation of the Gauss-Bonnet term on a manifold that has topology changes due to the formation of wormholes is not zero.” — Physical Review D
From microstructure to cosmology
Because the wormhole density in a dynamical spacetime is expected to fluctuate, this effective cosmological constant would likewise be dynamical — in other words, it behaves like a time-varying form of dark energy. To reproduce the observed cosmological constant, the authors estimate a required microscopic activity on the order of 1016 (10 quadrillion) wormholes per cubic meter per second. They argue that such a rate is not ruled out by current theoretical estimates, though it remains speculative.
Caveats and implications
This proposal is theoretical and mathematical. It provides a concrete mechanism linking small-scale topology changes to large-scale expansion, but it depends on model assumptions, fine-tuning choices, and the details of how quantum gravity behaves — topics that remain unresolved. The idea suggests new avenues for thinking about dark energy and offers targets for future theoretical and observational work, but it currently lacks direct experimental tests.
Bottom line: The paper offers a plausible, mathematically explicit route by which an extremely active microscopic landscape of wormholes could leave a measurable imprint on cosmic expansion. It is an intriguing, speculative contribution to efforts to reconcile quantum-field predictions with cosmological observations.