How evaporative cooling can stabilize a large bubble

Bubbles at a liquid surface are ephemeral and are expected to thin and pop. However, if the bubble is sufficiently volatile, evaporative cooling can counteract the drainage. Here we demonstrate that for a range of liquids, evaporative cooling can be large enough to reverse the direction of drainage, thus preventing breakup over significant timescales. Through systematic experiments and theoretical modeling, we explore the conditions needed for large bubble films to spontaneously reverse their drainage. Surprisingly, bubbles in liquids that evaporate as quickly as water demonstrate this phenomenon, raising the question "why are we not surrounded by an ocean of foam?"