Could the first stable wormholes be more like … real worms? The wormhole design that could eventually succeed is tiny and strangely shaped, Iranian researchers say. No word on whether these wormholes will appear only after a rainfall.

The hypothetical wormhole, of any shape or stability, is the result of two black holes that end up touching. But that means anything that crosses the threshold of either end is immediately sucked into the infinitely dense heart of one black hole or the other, never to return.

The series of conditions that would avoid an infinite, well, suckage past dual event horizons involves an escalating series of impossibilities based on the idea that general relativity basically doesn’t apply at all. The wormhole must be held open by a material with negative mass, for example. Right now, we don’t know of anything that fits the criteria.

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Now, those impossibilities also have a shape. In a new paper not yet reviewed for print, researchers studied ways to use quantum physics phenomena to describe how a wormhole might function. The secret is that an impossible black hole under general relativity is “improved” into a supportable quantum black hole.

Read more: Popular Mechanics