Could Champagne Bubbles Help Solve The Future Of Energy?

What kind of magic might be found inside a bottle of champagne?

Researchers at the American Institute of Physics have found that champagne bubbles can lead to new breakthroughs in the energy industry.

The phenomenon, known as "Ostwald ripening," can be used in scientific systems that include "spin systems, foams and metallic alloys." This process cal also be found through power-generating turbines that involve complex bubbling processes that require simulations made by the K computer at RIKEN. During the simulations, virtual molecules are assigned to initial velocities while researchers watch how they continue moving through Newton's law of motion.

For the study, researchers at the University of Tokyo's Institute for Solid State Physics simulated 700 million particles. Then, they followed their motion through a million timed steps.

Researchers discovered that the evolution of bubbles can be summed up with a 1960s mathematical framework known as "LSW theory" that has never before been used to describe gas bubbles in liquid.

"While the nucleation rate of droplets in condensation is well predicted by the classical theory, the nucleation rates of bubbles in a superheated liquid predicted by the theory are markedly different from the values observed in experiments," Watanabe said. "So we were expecting the classical theory to fail to describe the bubble systems, but were surprised to find that it held up."

More information regarding the findings can be seen via The Journal of Chemical Physics.

For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).