World Solve

Voting power at bodies like the IMF still roughly reflects the economic order from decades ago, giving less voice to countries that now represent a huge share of the world's population. This mismatch fuels distrust in the fairness of global rule-making.

Many global bodies depend heavily on voluntary contributions rather than fixed dues, letting big funders push their own priorities ahead of the institution's broader mission. This undermines the independence these institutions are supposed to have.

Clothing production involves water use, chemical dyes, and labor spread across many countries, making its full environmental cost difficult to measure accurately. Without clear measurement, meaningful accountability remains difficult to enforce.

Current wearables track surface-level signals like heart rate well, but measuring things like blood chemistry non-invasively remains far less reliable. Solving this could make preventive healthcare monitoring dramatically more accessible.

Evidence suggests Mars once had liquid water, a key ingredient for life, but no mission has yet found conclusive proof of past or present microbes. Answering this remains one of planetary science's biggest open questions.

Precious samples brought back from the Moon or asteroids need to remain scientifically useful for generations of future researchers. Long-term sample preservation technology hasn't fully caught up with mission ambitions.

Some argue extreme wealth carries an obligation to help others, while others see it purely as a matter of personal choice. Philosophy hasn't settled this question in any way most people accept.

Countries rich in oil, minerals, or gas sometimes see little of that wealth reach ordinary citizens due to corruption or unfair contracts. Ensuring resource wealth translates into broad public benefit remains a persistent unsolved problem.

Surveillance capabilities often grow quietly, justified by security concerns, with limited public awareness or debate about their true scope. Building lasting oversight mechanisms remains a persistent democratic challenge.

Malnutrition during early childhood can cause lifelong developmental harm, and crises like war or drought regularly disrupt food access for vulnerable children. Building more resilient food delivery systems in crisis zones remains urgently unresolved.

Tuberculosis remains a major killer in some regions, and drug-resistant strains are becoming harder and more expensive to treat. Slowing this resistance requires both better medicine access and improved treatment adherence support.

Countries with opt-out organ donation systems tend to have far higher donation rates, saving more lives, but implementing this fairly and ethically worldwide remains politically and culturally difficult.

Older buildings often waste huge amounts of energy through poor insulation and outdated systems, but retrofitting them is usually expensive and disruptive. Cheaper retrofit solutions could unlock major emissions reductions from existing infrastructure.

As electric vehicles become more common, so will the used batteries, most of which still lack an efficient, complete recycling process. Solving this prevents a looming new wave of battery waste.

Plastic waste in the ocean is well documented, but pinpointing exact sources at a granular level remains difficult, making targeted prevention harder. Better tracking could focus cleanup and policy efforts where they matter most.

Scammers constantly find new ways around call-blocking systems, and phone networks still let large volumes of fraudulent calls through. A truly effective, adaptive solution remains elusive.

Living without normal gravity weakens astronauts' bones and muscles over time. Practical, affordable ways to simulate gravity in space stations remain mostly untested at scale.

Detecting gravitational waves was a breakthrough, but modeling exactly what happens during these violent mergers pushes our computing power and physics equations to their limits.

This mismatch is part of the evidence for dark matter, but the details of how it shapes galaxy rotation are still not fully worked out. A better model would sharpen our understanding of galaxy formation.

A severe solar storm could knock out satellites, GPS, and even electrical grids with little warning. Better prediction would give critical infrastructure time to prepare or shut down safely.