The condensation phenomena that accompany the uncorking of a bottle of champagne have been observed by researchers from the GSMA’s Effervescence, Champagne and Applications team using an ultra-fast camera. A never-before-seen blue plume was shown to follow the popping of the cork.

The article published on 14 September in the Scientific Reports journal has been picked up by a large number of national and international media outlets. It was made ‘image of the week’ in the Science and Medicine section of the newspaper Le Monde on Wednesday 20 September 2017, and a video of the GSMA’s work, briefly explaining the phenomenon, was also included on Le Monde’s website.

Gérard Liger-Belair summarised the reasons for the appearance of this sky-blue plume for the news agency Agence France-Presse:

“This blue haze is the signature of the freezing of gas-phase CO2 initially present in the bottleneck of bottles stored at 20 °C. At this temperature of 20 °C, the pressure in the unopened bottle is around 8 bar (8 times the atmospheric pressure).

During the cork popping process, a plume mainly composed of gaseous CO2 with traces of water vapour freely expands out of the bottleneck through ambient air. Its temperature plummets to -90 °C, colder than the freezing point of carbon dioxide. Ice water crystals form in the bottleneck, and then serve as a catalyst for the transformation of carbon dioxide into dry ice. These tiny particles of dry ice scatter the ambient light and create this blue fog, sadly too transient to be observed by the naked eye. The fog is blue for the same reasons as the sky is blue when sunlight is scattered (more strongly for blue) by molecules in the atmosphere.”

For a more detailed explanation, please see the original article published in Scientific Reports and openly available via the link below.