09 March 2009 | Author: L. Sutherland Head of Media Content

New search engine on the scene

British physicist Stephen Wolfram is stepping into the search sphere with a powerful new engine that he hopes will answer searcher's questions succinctly. From his company, Wolfram Research, Wolfram plans to reveal the new search engine in two months time - so should the established search stalwarts start shaking in their boots?

The Guardian reports that the new engine - dubbed WolframAlpha - aims to comprehend searchers' questions and answer them directly. As Wolfram explains on his blog, much of human knowledge has been accumulated on the web but it isn't accessible in the way that people once hoped. While search engines are very efficient in finding words and phrases amongst the billions of pages that populate the internet, what they can't do is directly and effectively answer new questions.

Wolfram claims that, currently, search engines help us look information up but they don't show us the best way to figure new things out. This is exactly the gap in the knowledge market that Wolfram aims to fill by using the natural language humans can effortlessly negotiate and asking computers to communicate this way too.

However, to create a way for computers to understand natural language in all of its complexities is a massive task. But Wolfram explains: "If one's already made knowledge computable, one doesn't need to do that kind of natural language understanding.

"All one needs to be able to do is to take questions people ask in natural language, and represent them in a precise form that fits into the computations one can do."

Wolfram certainly isn't the first to attempt and take on the might of search giants such as Google with a new type of 'intuitive' search - Powerset attempted to get its natural language search engine off the ground back at the beginning of 2007 which was acquired by Microsoft last summer - though the project did not see much success.

Wolfson, on the other hand, could have the right stuff to succeed if his track record is any indicator. He invented the computer program Mathematica - one that helps the work of many scientists now - after receiving his PhD in theoretical physics from the California Institute of Technology at the tender age of 20. Now 49, Wolfram shows no sign of flagging.

Having been awarded the Macarthur Genius Grant in 1981, it's safe to assume that Wolfram has left nothing to chance in his creation of a new natural language search engine - the only question will be whether it catches on with the questioning public.

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