You’ll shoot your eye out: Popped champagne cork ejects CO2 at supersonic speeds
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The pop of a champagne cork turns out to have something in common with a rocket launcher, according to a recent paper published in the journal Physics of Fluids. Scientists from France and India used computer simulations to reveal in full detail what happens in the microseconds after uncorking a bottle of champagne. They discovered that in the first millisecond after the cork pops, the ejected gas forms different types of shockwaves-even reaching supersonic speeds-before the bubbly settles down and is ready to be imbibed.
"Our paper unravels the unexpected and beautiful flow patterns that are hidden right under our nose each time a bottle of bubbly is uncorked," said co-author Gerard Liger-Belair of the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne. "Who could have imagined the complex and aesthetic phenomena hidden behind such a common situation experienced by any one of us?"
Liger-Belair could imagine it, for one. He has been studying the physics of champagne for years and is the author of Uncorked: The Science of Champagne. He has gleaned numerous insights into the underlying physics by subjecting champagne to laser tomography, infrared imaging, high-speed video imaging, and mathematical modeling, among other methods.