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.

These particles carry more energy than anything we can produce on Earth, and we still don't know exactly what cosmic event launches them our way. Identifying the source could reveal entirely new astrophysical processes.

This period, known as cosmic inflation, is widely accepted as a concept but the exact physical mechanism driving it remains unproven. Confirming it would close a major gap in our understanding of the universe's first moments.

Current spacesuits are bulky, tiring, and limit fine motor movement, making long spacewalks physically exhausting. A more agile suit would make space construction and repair work far more practical.

Physical laws impose some theoretical limits on computation speed and energy use, but the exact universal boundary, if one truly exists, remains unresolved. This connects computer science directly to fundamental physics.

Knot theory offers tools for identifying and classifying tangles, but calculating a guaranteed minimal ontangling path for every possible knot remains computationally unresolved. This connects abstract mathematics to physical intuition about rope and cords.

Some tiling patterns work perfectly in abstract mathematical space but haven't been proven physically constructible under all real-world constraints. This connects pure geometry with material and structural engineering.

Even our best physical models rely on approximations or idealized assumptions, and whether a truly complete and exact mathematical simulation is even theoretically possible remains unresolved. This touches on the deep relationship between mathematics and the physical world.

Physical pain, emotional distress, and existential anguish may all count as suffering, but it's unclear whether they deserve identical moral weight or should be treated as fundamentally different categories. This unresolved question complicates how we compare and prioritize different kinds of harm.

If every event is caused by prior physical states, it's unclear how genuine choice could exist in the way we intuitively believe it does. This tension underlies debates about moral responsibility, punishment, and praise.

From childhood to old age, nearly everything about a person changes, yet we treat them as a single continuous identity, and no philosophical account of why has settled the matter. This affects questions about responsibility for past actions.

Even setting aside physical determinism, some argue that all our choices are ultimately shaped by factors outside our control, like genetics and upbringing, undermining true freedom. This unresolved metaphysical question has significant implications for how we assign responsibility.

If someone's memories, personality, and values change completely, it's unclear whether they remain the same person in any meaningful moral or metaphysical sense. This unresolved question has real implications for how we treat people with advanced dementia.

Laying physical fiber cable across mountains, deserts, or widely scattered rural populations is often prohibitively expensive relative to the number of people served. Finding cost-effective alternatives for these hard-to-reach areas remains unresolved.

Physical hardware used in sensitive systems can sometimes be tampered with before installation, and detecting this tampering reliably and affordably remains technically challenging. Closing this hardware security gap remains an unresolved priority.

Networking equipment can potentially be intercepted and secretly modified during shipping before it ever reaches its intended destination, creating hidden long-term security risks. Building tamper-evident supply chains for this hardware remains incompletely adopted.

Chronic stress physically changes the brain and body over time, and we don't yet have treatments that fully reverse that damage. Understanding this could transform how we treat burnout, trauma, and related illness.

Getting a broken bone fixed is usually straightforward; getting consistent mental health support often isn't, due to cost, stigma, and shortage of providers. Closing this gap could prevent enormous, often invisible suffering.

For decades, computer chips got faster mainly by shrinking transistors, but they're now near the smallest physically possible size. Finding a new way to keep computing power growing is an open engineering problem.

Neuroscience can map which brain regions activate during thought, but nobody can explain why that activity produces subjective experience at all. This gap separates our understanding of the brain from any real understanding of the mind.