If you boiled water in a no gravity environment which direction would the bubbles go?

Question

Boiling water in a no gravity environment

Answer 1

According to NASA "liquid boiling in weightlessness produces -- not thousands of effervescing bubbles -- but one giant undulating bubble that swallows up smaller ones!"

"Without convection or buoyancy, the process unfolds differently. Heated fluid doesn't rise, and instead just sits next to the heater surface and continues to get warmer. Regions of liquid away from the heater remain relatively cool. Because a smaller volume of water is being heated, it comes to a boil much more quickly. As bubbles of vapor form, though, they don't shoot to the surface -- they coalesce into a giant bubble that wobbles around within the liquid."

You can see for yourself if you click the link below and watch the videos that compare boiling water on Earth and in space. Pretty cool!

Answer 2

You've already gotten the correct answer, but I just wanted to comment on the really snotty tone of some of the really wrong responses above.
For instance, yes you can boil water in a Zero-G environment. Why not?
Yes, there is air in water in Zero-G, provided you are in an atmosphere.
Gosh, some people.
BTW, the correct answer was the "giant bubble subsuming the little bubbles" above. See there, is no "up" in Zero-G and no impetus for the gas bubbles to move in any particular direction, only to grow and move generally.
A similar (and pretty spectacular) experiment is the "toss a cup of warm water into extremely cold air" trick (an Arctic blast, I am told). Because it is falling at a fairly uniform rate, the water is effectively weightless (as the passengers of the "vomit comet" experience). The extreme cold and the weightless environment cause a wonderfully energetic reaction - it "POOF!s" into a cloud of crystals. Changing all at once from liquid to solid.
Were you able to heat the water uniformly in zero G, you would see a similar uniform transformation of the water to POOF! vapor, because there would be no convection to form localized hotspots (bubbles).
Cheers, and kudos to Aiden B.

Answer 3

In a zero-G environment, every direction from the center of mass is "up", so the bubbles, being lighter than their surrounding mass, would work their way from the center toward the outside of the boiling mass of water in all directions. By the way, if not held within a container, the boiling mass of water would have a spherical shape under zero-Gs. Neat, huh? It's the same process many photons (light) from the sun go through as they percolate "up" (outward) from the center of the sun to the surface to eventually shine out in all directions.

**EDIT**
I was assuming no container for the water in my answer. If the "bubble of air at center of mass" held true for uncontained boiling liquids in a zero-G environment, as exampled above by Aidan, then the Sun and all the planets would be hollow inside. When the liquid is not contained, its heavier elements always "sink" to the point of greatest gravitational influence, pushing its lighter elements to the areas of least gravitational influence.

As a result, the dense heart of our moon is off-center toward the Earth, due to Earth's great gravitational influence on the moon as it was cooling. Because of that, the moon always presents the same part of its surface to the Earth, the moon's greatest gravitational influencer... meaning toward the Earth is "down" to the moon.

Right under the surface of the moon we're so familiar with viewing can be found our moon's dense heart. While toward the dark side of the moon, away from the Earth, "up" to the moon, can be found the moon's lighter elements that were present in an homogenous mixture when the moon was in a liquid state, but percolated "outward" and "upward" away from both the moon's heavier elements and the Earth's greater gravitational pull as the moon cooled.

Answer 4

What bubbles? Water does not contain any air in it at 0 gravity! The previously contained air molecules go out of the water the moment the water is taken to 0 gravity.

Answer 5

In no gravity environment water remains as a sphere.

when we increase the temperature up to boiling point, the bubbles will go away from the center of the sphere.
this happens because the water sphere try to remain as a sphere escaping air away.

you can practically see something like this in a comet when it is closing to the sun.

Answer 6

You cant boil water in a zero gravity environment. Why would you want to,anyway?

Answer 7

Bubbles (in the liquid) will still go up due to convection currents from the heat source which pushes the water and therefore the bubbles up.

Answer 8

Interesting question. Thhey would not go per se \/

Would you place the water in a pot in zero G?

Microwaving a bag should for bubbles of air (steam) The bubbles would not move in any particular direction, but I would assume they would all coalesce in one spot allowing the remaining water to clump together as water likes to do.

The air (steam) may go to the corners... but don't know.

Answer 9

First, how would you boil water in a zero gravity environment. if you could accomplish this, the bubbles would theoretically go anywhere they please because there is no 'up' in zero G's

Answer 10

How could you boil something you could not contain or keep still to absorb the heat. Even so, the energy of the heat would push it away.