Wolfram Alpha: The online computational knowledge engine
By: Peter Chubb | May 19, 2009
Many of you have heard of Wolfram Alpha and have often wondered what it is. Well we can tell you that it is an online computational knowledge engine, which calculates answers for searches that already exists, so nothing like Google then.
Some of the questions that we are talking about are how long would it take to get to Saturn, while travelling at the speed of light? Or what is the velocity, or altitude of the International Space Station? The answer to the first question by the way is, “75 minutes — can be found in a fraction of a second.”
The Los Angeles Times explain that users of Wolfram Alpha can submit their own customized questions, and then the online computational knowledge engine will work the answer out on the fly. The answer is not given like Google and Wikipedia give you, instead Wolfram Alpha tries to use the actual corpus of human knowledge, which should give a more accurate answer.
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