Clarified at last: the physics of popping champagne

1/3 images When you uncork a bottle of champagne, complex supersonic phenomena occur. Scientists at TU Wien have now been able to calculate exactly what happens for the first time. It sounds like a simple, well-known everyday phenomenon: there is high pressure in a champagne bottle, the stopper is driven outwards by the compressed gas in the bottle and flies away with a powerful pop. But the physics behind this is complicated. Experiments with high-speed cameras have already been carried out, but a mathematical-numerical analysis has been lacking. This gap has now been closed at TU Wien: Using complex computer simulations, it was possible to recalculate the behavior of the stopper and the gas flow. In the process, astonishing phenomena were discovered: a supersonic shock wave is formed and the gas flow can reach more than one and a half times the speed of sound.