报告摘要：
　　Nanobubbles on hydrophobic surfaces can be imaged using Atomic Force Microscopy and are implicated in the very long-range attraction measured between hydrophobic surfaces. However, the widely accepted theory of bubble dissolution predicts that small bubbles under the influence of Laplace pressure should rapidly dissolve resulting in bubble lifetimes of less than a second. Such short lifetimes should preclude them from having an effect on surface force measurements or being observed by AFM, yet nanobubbles are readily observed by AFM and widely implicated in force measurements between hydrophobic surfaces. This has led to a number of attempts at describing their unexpected stability, though no explanation is currently widely accepted. Additionally, reports of long-lived nanobubbles in bulk solution add to the mystery. Here we present a new theory describing the stability of nanobubbles. The same theory predicts that bulk nanobubbles should be stable under certain circumstances. The implications of this work go beyond nanobubbles and stretch from the mundane, such as how long you need to wait to open a beer that has been dropped if you do not want it to gush foam upon opening; to the sublime such as the influence of bubble size distribution on the oxygenation of natural waters.