World Solve

Despite decades of robotics research, folding laundry or loading a dishwasher remains far harder for robots than tasks like chess or driving. Everyday physical tasks turn out to be a much harder problem than expected.

3D printing has transformed prototyping, but printing functional circuits and electronics remains unreliable and limited. Solving this could make custom electronics production dramatically faster and cheaper.

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.

Some outer moons hide liquid oceans beneath thick ice, and possibly conditions that could support life. Getting real data from beneath that ice remains a major unsolved engineering and mission challenge.

Earth's magnetic field protects us from solar radiation, but the dynamo process that generates it deep underground is still only partly understood. This matters for predicting how long that protection will last.

Right now we can only detect exoplanets indirectly, through shadows and wobbles in starlight. Direct imaging would let us actually study alien landscapes and atmospheres instead of just inferring their existence.

Decisions about climate change, resource use, and debt all require some answer to how much weight future, non-existent people deserve compared to those who exist now. Philosophers disagree sharply on this tradeoff.

Methane traps far more heat than carbon dioxide in the short term, yet nearly all climate technology focuses on capturing carbon dioxide instead. A cheap way to actively remove atmospheric methane could meaningfully slow near-term warming.

Parts of the Greenland ice sheet may have already crossed tipping points where melting continues regardless of future emissions cuts. Understanding and potentially slowing this process remains one of climate science's most urgent unresolved challenges.

Sea walls and barriers can protect some areas but often shift flooding risk elsewhere or fail to address long-term relocation needs. A truly sustainable coastal adaptation strategy remains incomplete in most vulnerable regions.

Deforestation and rising temperatures are pushing parts of the Amazon toward a state where it can no longer sustain itself as rainforest. Preventing this shift before it becomes irreversible remains an urgent, unresolved challenge.

Vast amounts of carbon and methane are locked in frozen Arctic soil, and as it thaws, it could release gases faster than current climate models predict. Better prediction tools are needed to understand how much this will accelerate warming.

Bee populations have declined sharply in many regions, partly due to pesticide exposure, threatening the pollination that much of global food production depends on. A farming approach that protects both crops and pollinators remains incomplete.

Vast areas of farmland worldwide have been degraded by decades of intensive use, and restoring their fertility can take years even with the right techniques. Scaling this restoration affordably remains an unresolved agricultural challenge.

Fertilizer and pesticide runoff from farms create dead zones in rivers and lakes where oxygen levels drop too low to support aquatic life. Preventing this runoff without harming farm productivity remains an unresolved environmental challenge.

Rising ocean temperatures trigger coral bleaching events that can kill reefs outright if heat stress lasts too long, and current interventions can only help a small fraction of affected reefs. Scaling protection to match the pace of warming remains unresolved.

Many heavily polluted cities in lower-income regions still lack dense, affordable monitoring networks that could help residents and policymakers respond in real time. Closing this data gap remains a persistent public health and environmental challenge.

Washing machines release countless tiny plastic fibers from synthetic fabrics into wastewater, and most filtration systems aren't designed to catch particles this small. This steady stream of microplastic pollution remains largely unaddressed at the source.

Some fish populations have been fished to the point of collapse, and even with strict conservation measures, recovery can take decades longer than demand is willing to wait. Balancing recovery with continued food needs remains unresolved.

Soil erodes far faster than it naturally regenerates in many farming regions, threatening long-term food production capacity. Reversing this imbalance at a global scale remains an unresolved agricultural and environmental challenge.