Two metal plates in a vacuum attract each other without any magnets or charges. This is the Casimir effect: the void is not empty; particles constantly pop in and out of existence, and there are fewer of them between the plates than outside. The pressure difference pushes the plates together.

The authors of the new study applied this idea to wormholes — hypothetical tunnels in spacetime. Normally, such tunnels collapse unless held open by something with negative energy. But in Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theory, higher-order corrections to gravity themselves provide the necessary support. The scientists found solutions where the wormhole throat remains open thanks to the Casimir energy, and the energy conditions are satisfied — meaning the matter behaves realistically, without fantastical violations.

They also traced the paths of light and massive particles through such a wormhole. The trajectories bend but remain predictable. The same quantum ripples that shift plates in the lab might, perhaps, connect distant regions of the cosmos.