The Swirly Energy Thingy is what it sounds like: a spinning, shining vortex of... something. Like a whirlpool, it's easy to get pulled in if you get too close.
Enter it and something weird will happen. Often it's a boring old wormhole — it'll drop you somewhere else in the universe... whether you wanted to go there or not — but like any good Negative Space Wedgie, it can also trigger a wide range [...] [tvtropes.org]