Lifetime
A wormhole's lifetime is how much time it has left before it collapses on its own.
| Status | Time remaining |
|---|---|
| Healthy | More than ~4 hours. Safe to rely on. |
| End of life (EOL) | Under ~4 hours. The hole has started to destabilise and may collapse soon — cross with care. |
| Critical | Under ~1 hour. Treat collapse as imminent; don't get stranded on the wrong side. |
| Expired | The in-game "Expired, closure imminent" state. The hole is past its reliable lifetime and can close at any moment, often within minutes. |
Set it, and let it age
You can set a connection's lifetime by hand, but the app also ages it automatically. Based on how long the hole has been on the map and what kind of wormhole it is, a connection moves toward EOL and then critical as it approaches its natural maximum age — and once a hole is marked EOL, it's treated as critical a few hours later.
Expired is never set automatically. It only appears when someone reads it off the hole in game and marks it by hand, so the map never claims a hole has expired just because it is old. On the map an expired hole's line and clock badge pulse red.
Different wormhole types live different lengths of time, so the app uses the hole's type to decide when to age it. A standard hole and a C6 static don't reach end-of-life at the same wall-clock age.
Time remaining
Click a connection and its status shows how long it has left, whatever its lifetime. A hole marked EOL or critical counts down from the moment it was marked. Anything else is estimated from how long it has been on the map: 24 hours for most holes, 48 for a C6 hole into known space and 16 for a drifter hole into known space. The estimate starts when the hole reached the map, not when it opened, so treat it as the most it could have left. Once the time runs out, or as soon as a hole is marked expired, it reads "any moment now".
Lifetime is independent of mass — a hole can be fresh on mass and still end-of-life on time. Autopilot can be told how aged a hole it's willing to use; see Wormhole filters.