Collective bubble growth in water and water+oil systems: How to make bubbles grow indefinitely

When cold, air-saturated water is put into a glass, air bubbles will form, as observed by millions of people in the freshly poured glasses of water on their bedside tables.This is a well-known effect caused by the higher solubility of air at lower temperatures. When the glass is left alone, the air bubbles will subsequently slowly dissolve due to the slightly higher pressure caused by their surface tension, which creates a mildly elevated gas concentration inside the bubble with respect to the environment that drives the transport. In this work, we change the atmospheric boundary condition by adding a thin layer of immiscible oil on top of the water and show that under certain conditions we can make the air bubbles grow indefinitely. We investigate these conditions in a set of humidity-controlled experiments. Finally, we present a mass transfer model that fully accounts for the observed phenomena.