I'm going to drop back a bit, and steal an idea from Doug Natelson, who posted about Grand Challenges in condensed matter physics almost two weeks ago. This was prompted by a report from the National Research Council listing such challenges, including things like "How do complex phenomena emerge from simple ingredients?" and "How will the energy demands of future generations be met?" They're certainly grand, and challenging.
So, the question for the audience is:
What are the Grand Challenges in your own field?
If you're a scientist, what are the big questions that need to be answered in your own field? If you're not a scientist, what are some big questions that you think science ought to be trying to tackle? For that matter, what are some Grand Challenges in non-scientific fields? What big questions need to be addressed in history, or art, or music?
For my own field of Atomic, Molecular, and Optical physics, it's a bit of a tough question, for the same reason that it's hard to make a list for condensed matter physics: the field touches on a number of different things, from old-school spectroscopy to molecular collisions, to quantum optics.
My corner of things is mostly about quantum optics-- atoms, photons, and interactions between them, so if I had to pick a single Grand Challenge sort of question, it'd come from that area. I think I'll go with:
How can we exploit the quantum nature of reality to do useful things?
That covers most of the work in quantum information, quantum computing, and the like, as well as some really deep questions about the nature of quantum mechanics.
What's your favorite Grand Challenge?
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The Locking Problem.
Every solution out there is still broken and subject to catastrophic failure.
How interesting that Jamie Bowden mentions the Locking Problem, just after I read about an electromagnetic pulse device for locking shopping carts. Synchronicity, man!
I think the biggest problem maybe the nature of dark energy. Firstly, there is evidently a lot of it, and unlike dark matter(for which there are numerous models), we have almost no idea what it could really be.
The Grand Challenge in the corporate software industry is getting something vaguely reasonable out the door given ridiculous deadlines, broken specs, and in spite of nearly obstructionist practices and policies imposed by management.
But hey I'm not bitter about it.
Long time lurker, first time poster. I'm just starting to study Operations Research. One Grand Challenge I've noticed is email - how to deal with it efficiently. [Check it 2-4 times/day, work for a set period of time, and deal with them in priority order, or so current thinking goes. Your (boss's) mileage may vary, though.]
Oh - and always the Traveling Salesman Problem.
Information storage - how to store the greatest amount of data in the smallest possible area, and yet have the data still readable a century or more from the time of recording?