2016: year by which a French team hopes to finish an ambitious ocean-going laboratory that would rival the Starship Enterprise in scope

4 hours: battery life of a jetpack for divers

31 days: time Fabien Cousteau will spend living in the undersea research habitat Aquarius

100 percent: portion of untreated water that contained morphine in a recent study

100 feet: height by which water levels at Lake Mead, the largest drinking-water reservoir in the U.S., have dropped in the past decade (another 50 feet, and the first intake pipe will start sucking air)

43 pounds: amount of electronic waste generated each year for every human on the planet

1.1 million: number of plastic particles per square kilometer in Lake Ontario, according to a recent study (Illinois is now the first state to ban microbeads, small plastic bits often found in cosmetic products)

36 percent: the packing density of small, rigid particles

30 billionths of a degree: precision of a thermometer made from light

46 percent: portion of the world's population that watched the 2010 World Cup

12.6 terabytes: data traffic that attendees of this year's World Cup are expected to create 

150 kHz: frequency of the calls of the highest-pitched species ever recorded