I am looking for a word or phrase that means "a long sought out goal that seems impossible to achieve" but without any religious connotations. Any suggestions?
My intended usage is as follows:
The holy grail in ABC is to identify XYZ
where ABC is an academic field of study and XYZ is a solution approach with desired features.
Phrases like "the Holy Grail of Physics", are snowclones of the form "Z is the X of Y". They work because X's properties are well-understood and can be used to immediately relate Z and Y.
So if someone says
Artificial Intelligence is the Holy Grail of Computer Science
Then everyone knows what that means: AI is something that is rumoured to exist (or be possible to create) and it is as fervently desired to computer scientists as the real Holy Grail would be to religious people/Indiana Jones.
The point of all of this is that it doesn't matter what X is; all that matters is that when "the X of Y" is put together, you understand what the comparison is.
Examples:
The Elvis of hip hop
etc.
The reason I say all of this in answer to your question is that "The Holy Grail of Y" doesn't have religious connotation, and it's the best phrase to use. It's a mythical object that has been the source of quests to discover its location, etc. It has inspired many fictional tales. People dream of finding it. There is scant reason to believe it could actually exist, but it is plausible. Its origin is in literature, not religious practice. So use "the Holy Grail of Y", just like you freely say "Good-bye" without worrying about its etymology.
A further reason to use this phrase is because it only works when people get your reference. Example: bib's comment below, where his father calls himself "the Derek Jeter of mussels", was completely opaque to me because I have no idea who Derek Jeter is. If you find a synonym, such as Andrew Leach's "El Dorado", which actually suits your meaning, you have to be careful that it is obvious why you are making the connection. Everyone knows what the Holy Grail of Y is. People might not understand what the El Dorado of Y is.
I'm going to mention an interesting phrase: ultima thule
The term ultima Thule in medieval geographies denotes any distant place located beyond the "borders of the known world".
Virgil coined the term Ultima Thule (Georgics, 1. 30) meaning furthest land as a symbolic reference to denote a far-off land or an unattainable goal.
It is still used today in this symbolic sense.
There is also will-o'-the-wisp
a goal that cannot be reached, a delusive or elusive goal
It originally means the atmospheric ghost lights seen at night over marshy grounds. But it is used in this symbolic sense in literature.
Source:http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/will-o%27-the-wisp
Other than that, there is a pipe dream but it wouldn't be suitable for your context. It is worth to mention because it is related.
an idea that could never happen because it is impossible
The classless society is just a pipe dream.
Note: I gave this answer in another question which is closed.
In some cases El Dorado could be a possibility for something which is much sought-after but ultimately unachievable. As it's a Spanish expression from the South American Conquest, the phrase has never had any religious connotations.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, Europeans, still fascinated by and ignorant of the New World, believed that a hidden city of immense wealth existed. Many searched for this treasure, in quests that ended in the loss of countless lives. The illustration of El Dorado's location on maps only made matters worse, as it made some people think that the city of El Dorado's existence had been confirmed. The mythical city of El Dorado on Lake Parime was marked on English and other maps until its existence was disproved by Alexander von Humboldt during his Latin-America expedition (1799–1804)
Avoid colloquialisms in an academic paper, in part because they require knowledge — and a shared understanding — of a domain irrelevant to the actual discourse.
Avoid colloquialisms even in informal writing for the same reason: you’re trying to guide the reader’s thoughts and emotions, and colloquialisms can divert the reader into thoughts like those expressed above.
If I needed it, I’d stick with Holy Grail. None of the alternatives offered conveys the same meaning.
However, using it doesn't transform the discussion into a religious matter, and most educated people will at least know the reference — just as they should also know something about the rest of the world’s great religions. If not, you can have a nice chat with the person you’re speaking with and bring the world a little closer together.
The word you're looking for is Moonshot. A moonshot is usually a highly risky attempt to reach a very rewarding goal. It's when success seems unlikely, but you're going for it anyway.
For a discussion of the word, see here.
As an example use of the word, here's a WSJ headline from today:
Google's New Moonshot Project: the Human Body
You could say you're...
searching for the pot of gold [at the end of the rainbow] (thousands of hits in Google Books)
...but the strong implication there is that goal really is unreachable (it doesn't just seem so). Note that the idiomatic usage is so well known that just pot of gold is all that's needed...
I take it that the "pot of gold" for most of us is happiness (The Rotarian - Oct 1938)
'Sisyphean task'--an impossible task. Named after Sisyphus, the king of ancient Corinth who blasphemed the gods and was condemned to Hades where his penalty was to forever roll a boulder up a hill to the top. But he was so fatigued by the effort as he pushed the boulder higher, he had to halt and the boulder rolled back to the bottom of the hill--and the effort had to be repeated for all eternity.
As this is about academic fields, I would take a well known metaphor from the time-honoured field of alchemy:
"The philosopher's stone in ABC is to identify XYZ."
If you are really sure it's not achievable, you can also put it this way:
"The squaring of the circle in ABC would be to identify XYZ."
Right. If you are writing an academical paper, I would entirely avoid the "holy grail" concept. In science there are no such things as "holy grails". (It would make you sound naive or not used to scientific papers.)
Personally, just my opinion, a simple expression such as:
"one of the most important and still unsolved problems in ABC is ..."
or something like that, might work just fine.
If you are not really trying to suggest impossiblity, just the extreme difficulty and rarity of the achievement, you might try Everest
high point; summit: The book is an Everest in the field of historical scholarship. [Infoplease Dictionary]
Similarly in [Collins]
any high point of ambition or achievement
You could say chasing after the sun.
If your audience is mathematical (or scientific/technical) several examples spring to mind.
This suggests it may be solvable in a half millennium or so:
The Fermat Theorem in ABC is to identify XYZ.
This suggests the problem solution is just getting under way:
The Riemann Hypothesis in ABC is to identify XYZ.
And these suggest that the problem is going to take a while:
XYZ in ABC could have been one of Hilbert's Problems.
or
XYZ in ABC is a Millennium Prize Problem candidate.
Mathematics is rather rich in "long sought out goal[s] that seem...impossible to achieve"
How about saying the Higgs particle of X?
idk. I say "notable" because it is a fact that has particular significance or insight into how or to what end. lol
"In a notable study of the information systems technolgoy program, the project life cycle has projected new insights into developing a superior technology."
