Look this is pretty amazing, Scientists have estimated the first cosmic census of planets in our galaxy and the numbers are astronomical: at least 50 billion planets in the Milky Way.. Seems like there could be some pretty amazing discoveries coming our way pretty soon if this Telescope works the way that it was designed...!

Weirdest thing I've ever seen. Loads of really good information here: http://www.seaslugforum.net/factsheet.cfm?base=glauatla

What's actually inside? are there animals like a zoo or it is just trees and stuff?

I don't think that it should be underestimated. It hasn't really hit the headlines like Deep Blue did, and I assume that that is simply because we've grown accustomed to the rapidly advancing sophistication of computing.

However this sort of natural language processing, is clearly the way forward in data mining. Google does an amazing job of working out what you need from vast amounts of data but we all use very simplistic search terms and then often wade through millions of results trying to find what we're after.

We spend a lot of time adapting our search terms to fit what we think will provide the best results. When a computer can "understand" the meaning of our request it will revolutionise data retrieval. It seems that with Watson the system and even interpolate between different components of the enquiry.

I'd like to know just how structured Watson's database was. I assume that it must have been very cleverly organised, in that if you just attached him to the Internet, he'd (it) would never be able to work out what was real or accurate. I wonder however if you attached him to Wikipedia - is there enough structure there for him to make sense of "meaning"?

I think only time will tell, but just imagine an effective speech reignition system being plugged into the front end, and say a huge Medical database at the backend. How well could Watson diagnose conditions based on a description of symptoms?

It would be fantastic to see a system like this connected to the Internet so that we could all ask it questions. How about if it was available to say Astronauts on the Space Station? People that need answers but don't have access to books or a room of experts - just ask the computer!

I'm curious about a few things. 1) How does Watson calculate the % confidence of it's answers. 2) How does Watson "see" the categories available, assuming that he (it) doesn't have eyes, these must have been pre-entered? And 3) How does it receive the questions, assuming (again) that it doesn't have ears.

Good IBM Video here

Looks like a hair at micro level.