Physics behind champagne's flying cork revealed

French scientists have found that while just 5 percent of the total energy is required to make a cork of the champagne bottle fly across the room when opening a bottle, most of the energy is dissipated as the 'pop' sound.

Gerard Liger-Belair of the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne and his team also found that the cork's speed and the amount of carbon dioxide released increase with temperature, the Age reported.

For research purposes, researchers opened bottles of bubbly at 4C, 12C and 18C, and studied the cloud of carbon dioxide released with high-speed infra-red imaging.

When the cork was popped at 4C, it is launched at just under 40km/h, while at 18C its velocity is almost 55km/h.

Liger-Belair added in the report that every year, the combination of warm bottles of champagne or sparkling wines with careless cork-removal technique results in serious eye injuries and even permanent vision loss.

The study is published in the Journal of Food Engineering.