Is it Safe to Sonicate an Un-opened Bottle of Champagne?

[Fanghur]

I've got a friend who has a sonicator/de-gasser, whatever you want to call it in his house. He told me that he would like to see what would happen if he sonicated an un-opened bottle of champagne; I need to know if that would be dangerous? I mean it would obviously make a huge mess, but would there be any actual danger in doing that?

[Mr Skeptic]

Once I wanted to see how high I could make a cork go, so I put a rather large firework in a champagne bottle, corked it, and lit it. The cork flew pretty good, and also the bottle exploded and sent pieces of glass half a block in all directions. Oops, I guess.

[Radical Edward]

well your choices are;

 

it would do nothing

it would crack the bottle.

the bottle would explode sending shards of glass everywhere.

 

 

I suggest that if you do this, you do it from another room and observe your experiment through a webcam.

[Hypercube]

Is your friend out of his mind? DO NOT LET HIM ATTEMPT THIS!!!! If he wants to try sonicating a fizzy drink that hasn't been opened yet tell him to try it on a bottle of Club Soda or Coke or something else; as long as the bottle isn't made of glass. Then at least the worst thing that could happen is that he gets temporary hearing loss.

 

Fanghur; if your friend sonicates an unopened glass bottle of champagne (or any other airtight glass container containing fizzy liquid) there is a very real chance that the end result will be something akin to a shrapnel grenade going off; at best he will be seriously injured, at worst killed.

 

So unless you are eager to see your friend rushed to the emergency room, don't let him attempt this "experiment" on any kind of glass bottle.