Wolfram|Alpha is up and running! Ask it a question!, page 1

Wolfram|Alpha is finally up and running!

I have been looking forward to this for so long. This is a new type of search engine, where you ask it something and it gives you an answer.

Example: I asked, "The Meaning of Life"
Wolfram's Response: 42

Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

Wolfram|Alpha aims to bring expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people—spanning all professions and education levels. Our goal is to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity.

Wolfram|Alpha is an ambitious, long-term intellectual endeavor that we intend will deliver increasing capabilities over the years and decades to come. With a world-class team and participation from top outside experts in countless fields, our goal is to create something that will stand as a major milestone of 21st century intellectual achievement.

Go enjoy it for yourself and tell us here at ATS what you asked.

Just imagine what this in tells for the future of search engines... Where the possibilities will lead.

As of now, Wolfram|Alpha contains 10+ trillion of pieces of data, 50,000+ types of algorithms and models, and linguistic capabilities for 1000+ domains. Built with Mathematica—which is itself the result of more than 20 years of development at Wolfram Research—Wolfram|Alpha's core code base now exceeds 5 million lines of symbolic Mathematica code. Running on supercomputer-class compute clusters, Wolfram|Alpha makes extensive use of the latest generation of web and parallel computing technologies, including webMathematica and gridMathematica.

That is a HUGE amount of data.

Just FYI: Wolfram doesnt know what to make of God's existence...

Wolfram|Alpha

[edit on 5/17/2009 by Tentickles]