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The Universe in a Wine Glass: How New Worlds Are Born

Original: "Birth of Inflationary Universes via Wineglass Wormholes and their No-Boundary Relatives"
arXiv:2605.10548v1 · 2026-05-11 · CC BY · ⏱ 1 min · HEP Theory General Relativity
A microscopic bridge, shaped like a wine glass, can give birth to an entire universe.
Abstract

Imagine that our Universe could be born like a bubble in boiling water. Scientists have found special 'wormholes' shaped like a wine glass that allow new universes to emerge inside already existing ones. It turns out that under certain conditions, these wormholes split into two parts, changing the topology of space. Could this be happening in our reality?

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Immediately after the Big Bang, according to the theory of Alan Guth, space instantly inflated. The cause of the jolt remained a mystery: calculations break down at the point of infinite density.

Physicists found an answer at the quantum level: microscopic bridges — wormholes — in the fabric of spacetime. If such a bridge carries an axion field or a magnetic charge, it stretches into the shape of a wine glass. The bowl is our inflating universe, the stem is a narrow neck, and the base is the parent world.

The weaker the charge, the thinner the stem and the longer inflation lasts. The glow of the cosmic microwave background — the echo of the Big Bang — suggests that our glass arose with nearly zero charge, which is why the universe is so smooth.

At the zero limit, the stem disappears. The glass loses its connection to the base, turning into a bubble with dark energy. This is exactly the picture of 'birth from nothing' painted by Hawking. Now both scenarios are just edges of one shape. The quantum wine glass becomes the cradle of creation: it gives a beginning without a singularity and accelerates growth.

🎯 At the zero-charge limit, the stem disappears, and the wine glass turns into two disconnected objects: an inflating bubble and a void. This is how the theory unites two seemingly opposite scenarios of the universe's birth.

🎬 In the movie 'Interstellar,' wormholes are passages between galaxies, but here they give birth to entire universes, remaining invisible quantum bridges.

S_E = 2\pi^2 \int d\tau \left( -3 a \dot{a}^2 + \frac{1}{2} a^3 \dot{\phi}^2 - 3a + a^3 V(\phi) + \frac{Q_a^2}{a^3} + \frac{Q_m^2}{a} \right)
The action determines the weight of a configuration in the path integral: Ψ ∼ exp(-S_E).
-S_{E} = \frac{12\pi^2}{V_{top}}
For V_top=1 (in Planck units), the weight is about 118.4, which is the limit for low-charge wine-glass wormholes.
Scientists
Alan GuthAndrei LindeGeorges LemaîtreJames PeeblesAdam RiessBrian Schmidt
Tags
Wormhole inflation axion electromagnetism Quantum Field dark energy cosmic microwave background expansion of the universe big bang spacetime curvature
Laws
Friedmann equationsHubble's lawNoether's theoremEinstein field equationsPlanck's lawPlanck–Einstein relation
Original: arXiv:2605.10548v1 · CC BY · bridge42worlds