Two attempts (that I know of) have been made to count/calculate the number of bubbles in a bottle of Champagne (Yes, there are clearly people with too much time on their hands!). The estimates differ greatly, but both will surprise you.
As he was opening a bottle of Champagne a few years ago, scientist
Bill Lembeck speculated on how many bubbles would soon come
bursting to life. Having realized that there would probably not
be the same number of bubbles in every bottle, Bill Lembeck
decided that he would be satisfied with a reasonable estimate. He
then determined that essentially all he had to do was calculate
the volume of CO2 in a 750 ml bottle of Champagne and divide this
number by the volume of an average bubble.
The next step in Lembecks scientific inquiry was to
determine the size and volume of an average Champagne bubble.
With the aid of a machine called an optical
comparator, Lembeck was able to determine the average
bubble diameter at the surface of the wine in a glass. It was 0.5
mm (0.020 in). Knowing this, it was childs play for him to
compute the volume of the average bubble; a minuscule 69
millionths of a ml (4.2 millionths of a cubic inch).
2. Bruno Dutertre headed a three year, $7 million joint-project between Moet & Chandon and Heineken to "understand and study the influence of chemical and physical parameters on the formation of bubbles and the stability of the mousse" between 1986 and 1989. At the heart of this research was a camera-based, computer-linked "artificial vision" system built by ITMI (Industrie et Technolgie de la Machine), which actually recorded the release of bubbles and counted them. According to Monsieur Dutertre, there are on average 250 million bubbles in a bottle (of Champagne, not lager!).