A bottle of beer has 5 grams of CO2 per liter of liquid. A bottle of champagne has 12 grams per liter. When you open one of those bottles, the CO2 inside becomes “super-saturated”—that is, its pressure dissolved in the liquid is higher than equilibrium with the external atmosphere will allow. The CO2 has to come out, which it does by forming bubbles. Now, champagne is pressurized to six times the atmospheric pressure on earth at sea level, enough to propel a popped champagne cork faster than 30 miles an hour. Lesson: letting the cork shoot out of a bottle when you open it is both tacky and
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