World Solve

The absence of robust, context-adapted solutions for governance frameworks ensuring that advances in longevity science benefit all socioeconomic groups creates cascading risks across interconnected human and natural systems. Key missing elements include durable performance, low lifetime cost, and governance arrangements capable of sustaining impact beyond pilot stages.

The absence of robust, context-adapted solutions for technologies enabling precise and low-impact application of agricultural inputs creates cascading risks across interconnected human and natural systems. Key missing elements include durable performance, low lifetime cost, and governance arrangements capable of sustaining impact beyond pilot stages.

Achieving carbon-negative cementitious binders setting in saline conditions at meaningful scale demands simultaneous progress in fundamental research, engineering integration and socio-technical systems that work for low- and middle-income settings. Existing efforts remain fragmented relative to the magnitude of the challenge.

The absence of robust, context-adapted solutions for education approaches that build the capacity of local institutions to manage climate risks creates cascading risks across interconnected human and natural systems. Key missing elements include durable performance, low lifetime cost, and governance arrangements capable of sustaining impact beyond pilot stages.

The absence of robust, context-adapted solutions for solutions for safe long-term storage and monitoring of captured carbon dioxide creates cascading risks across interconnected human and natural systems. Key missing elements include durable performance, low lifetime cost, and governance arrangements capable of sustaining impact beyond pilot stages.

Transit times to Mars and the outer planets require months to years of flight, increasing risk and cost. Breakthrough high-thrust, high-Isp propulsion systems—such as nuclear thermal or plasma engines—are critical.

Gas-pressurized suits strain astronaut joints, limiting mobility and causing physical fatigue during extravehicular activities. Mechanical counter-pressure suit technology (biosuits) needs practical design breakthroughs.

Solar-powered stratospheric drones designed for continuous Earth observation fail to survive long winter nights due to payload weight. Breakthrough high energy-density batteries and ultra-light solar wings are needed.

Effective treatments for addiction exist, but cost and availability limits keep many people from accessing them, particularly in underserved communities. Closing this access gap remains as important as any treatment breakthrough.

Existing dementia treatments offer only modest, temporary relief from symptoms rather than meaningfully slowing the underlying disease. A real disease-modifying treatment remains one of medicine's most sought-after breakthroughs.

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.

Millions of people with chronic pain are stuck choosing between inadequate relief or medications that carry serious addiction risk. A safer, equally effective alternative remains one of medicine's most requested breakthroughs.

Some cancers are caught early and treated successfully, while others are found too late simply because no cheap, accurate screening exists for them. Broader early detection could save far more lives than treatment breakthroughs alone.

Despite decades of research, battery capacity has improved far more slowly than the power demands of our devices. A real breakthrough here would change how we use and design nearly all portable technology.

Even our fastest probes would take tens of thousands of years to reach the nearest star system. Without a breakthrough in propulsion, interstellar travel remains purely theoretical.

Current approaches to designs for digital identity and credential systems that protect privacy and prevent exclusion either underperform under variable field conditions or generate externalities that undermine long-term sustainability and equity. Closing the gap requires coordinated advances in science, systems design and enabling institutions.

The absence of robust, context-adapted solutions for education systems that equip learners with the skills needed for a circular and regenerative economy creates cascading risks across interconnected human and natural systems. Key missing elements include durable performance, low lifetime cost, and governance arrangements capable of sustaining impact beyond pilot stages.

The absence of robust, context-adapted solutions for open-source platforms for collaborative climate model development and evaluation creates cascading risks across interconnected human and natural systems. Key missing elements include durable performance, low lifetime cost, and governance arrangements capable of sustaining impact beyond pilot stages.

Achieving institutional designs that increase the political feasibility of ambitious climate policies at meaningful scale demands simultaneous progress in fundamental research, engineering integration and socio-technical systems that work for low- and middle-income settings. Existing efforts remain fragmented relative to the magnitude of the challenge.

The absence of robust, context-adapted solutions for galactic cosmic ray shielding without prohibitive mass penalties creates cascading risks across interconnected human and natural systems. Key missing elements include durable performance, low lifetime cost, and governance arrangements capable of sustaining impact beyond pilot stages.