  A slender object undergoing an axial compression will buckle to alleviate the
stress. Typically the morphology of the deformed object depends on the bending
stiffness for solids, or the viscoelastic properties for liquid threads. We
study a chain of uniform sticky air bubbles that rise due to buoyancy through
an aqueous bath. A buckling instability of the bubble chain with a
characteristic wavelength is observed. If a chain of bubbles is produced faster
than it is able to rise, the dominance of viscous drag over buoyancy results in
a compressive stress that is alleviated by buckling the bubble chain. Using low
Reynolds number hydrodynamics, we predict the critical buckling speed, the
terminal speed of a buckled chain, and the geometry of the buckles.
