The Rise of Antibubbles

Odd, soggy bubbles finally get some respect

Two years into his doctoral research, which had him looking long and hard at bubbles rising in a liquid, Alberto Tufaile noticed something odd. Sometimes, a few small bubbles would circle around in his flasks instead of rising to the top. “I was worried because I couldn’t explain what I was seeing,” recalls Tufaile, now a physicist at the University of São Paulo in Brazil.