World Solve

Genomic medicine could improve treatment while enabling insurers, employers, states, or platforms to infer sensitive traits. The challenge is ensuring people benefit from precision medicine without losing control over biological information. The solution must work with limited capital, intermittent services, and local maintenance capacity. The research opportunity is to define measurable success criteria, test the approach in realistic settings, identify failure modes, and create a pathway from prototype to accountable deployment.

Genomic and biomarker-driven therapies will transform oncology and rare disease care, but high costs and limited capacity risk concentrating benefits in wealthy populations. Fair pricing, global data-sharing, and low-cost diagnostics will be critical.

Cosmological data show the Universe’s expansion speeding up, yet we lack a clear physical mechanism beyond a simple cosmological constant. Precision surveys and alternative gravity theories could clarify whether dark energy is a new field or modified gravity.

Big Bang models suggest equal amounts of matter and antimatter, yet the observable Universe is dominated by matter. Precision measurements of CP violation and new physics at high energies could explain the imbalance.

Inflationary models explain early expansion but differ in predictions for primordial fluctuations and multiverse scenarios. Precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background and primordial gravitational waves could distinguish models.

Formation flying for interferometry demands extreme precision. Advances in control theory and sensor technology are needed.

Decades of overfarming without replenishment have depleted nutrients, and fertilizer remains too costly for most smallholders. Affordable soil-testing kits and precision fertilizer blending could reverse the trend.

Space-based solar power requires transmitting multi-gigawatt microwave or laser beams safely through Earth's atmosphere. Phased array antenna precision and efficiency losses remain significant engineering bottlenecks.

Ocean currents regulate weather and temperature worldwide, and small changes could have outsized global effects. Current climate models still can't predict these shifts with the precision policymakers need.

Irrational numbers have infinite, non-repeating digits, and while we can calculate them to enormous precision, no simple predictive pattern for their exact sequence has been found. This touches on deep unresolved questions in number theory.

Some optimization problems are proven solvable efficiently, others proven intractable, but a complete boundary map covering every conceivable variation remains incomplete. This unresolved question is central to computational complexity theory.

3D printing excels at prototyping and small-batch production but still can't match the speed, precision, and cost-efficiency of traditional mass manufacturing for complex electronics. Closing this gap could transform how and where products are made.

Develop strains, feedstocks, reactors, safety protocols, and business models that can produce nutritious proteins without depending on costly imported inputs.