Revolutionary British search engine will be 'as important as Google'
A renowned British physicist is launching a new internet search engine in May, which experts said could be as important as Google.
Professor Stephen Wolfram, founder of software company Wolfram Research, announced that work was almost finished on the first phase of his 'computational knowledge engine.'
A new type of revolutionary online search engine from Professor Stephen Wolfram will be launched in May
Most search engines like Google and Yahoo scan through billions of web pages for keywords or phrases and return a series of documents that may contain the answer to your question, or point you in the right direction.
'We can only answer questions that have been literally asked before. We can look things up, but we can’t figure anything new out,' Professor Wolfram said.
However, the London-born physicist claims his website 'Wolfram Alpha' can understand what you are looking for and calculate a single precise answer.
So in theory it will be able to answer questions such as 'What is the location of Timbuktu?', 'How many protons are in the hydrogen atom?' and 'Where is the International Space Station?'
'There will be one simple input field that gives access to a huge system, with trillions of pieces of curated data and millions of lines of algorithms,' Professor Wolfram said.
This ability to process natural language, understanding everyday speech as well as computer-programming language, could prove to be a leap forward in how humans interact with computers.
At present such machines only exists in science fiction, like the ship's computer in Star Trek or Deep Thought from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Professor Wolfram claims his search engine will be able to answer factual questions accurately, like the ship's computer in Star Trek
Scientist and internet entrepreneur Nova Spivack was impressed with the search engine after he had a sneak preview.
'It is like plugging into a vast electronic brain,' Mr Spivack reported.
He said Alpha can answer questions about technology, geography, weather, cooking, business, travel, people, and music.
'Questions are broken down to their basic parts and then simple reasoning takes place, and answers are computed on the vast knowledge base in the system.
'In fact it may be as important for the Web (and the world) as Google, but for a different purpose.'
Professor Wolfram said people hoped computers would be able to answer questions accurately 50 years ago, but the task has proved too challenging until now.
'I’d always thought,' he wrote on his blog 'that eventually it should be possible.'
The professor has dedicated his life to theoretical particle physics, computer algebra and computability theory.
Educated at Eton, he published an article on particle physics aged just 16, and went on to Oxford university, receiving a doctorate on particle physics from Caltech aged 20.
In 1987, he founded Wolfram Research to develop his computer algebra system Mathematica. The company promotes itself as an 'intellectual pioneer' and now has more than 300 staff. Professor Wolfram remains the CEO and majority shareholder.
Professor Wolfram said his online search engine was the most complex project that he had ever undertaken, and because human knowledge evolves, it will never be truly finished.
'I think it’s going to be pretty exciting. A new paradigm for using computers and the web,' he said.
The search engine will be available in May at www.wolframalpha.com