Carbon dioxide bubbles in a glass of champagne rise to the surface in fine threads, which are made of bubble groupings that change over time. Researchers from French and Brazilian universities have produced a new model that accounts for the patterns in strings of bubbles in champagne and other effervescent fluids. The research appears in Physical Review E. According to the researchers, the work could be important in understanding bubbles formed of dissolved gasses in other situations, such as nitrogen bubbles that grow in the blood vessels of surfacing divers and can cause decompression sickness, and the explosive release of carbon dioxide gas from Cameroon's Lake Nyos that killed thousands of people in 1986.