What plane just flew by? Wolfram Alpha knows
Ever see a plane go by and wonder where it came from and where it’s going? Now you can find out using Wolfram Alpha. I’m not kidding.
A search of “flights overhead” in Wolfram Alpha’s search engine will provide results of all the planes flying by, how high up they are, and even what angle they’re traveling in.
Clicking on each flight will tell you where it took off from, where it’s landing, its current coordinates, and chart plotting its altitude, ground speed and heading.
But that’s not even the coolest part of the feature. When you’re in flight, you can now take a photo through a plane window of something below you and ask Wolfram Alpha what it is when you land (or if you have a Wi-Fi connection on the plane, you can find out immediately).
Think you snapped a shot of the Grand Canyon, but you’re not really sure? Check the time stamp of the photo you took and plug it into the search engine with your flight information.
For instance, if you were on the Jet Blue flight 1133 that was overhead when I grabbed the screenshot above and you took a photo at 7:30 a.m., you’d type “Jet Blue flight 1133 at 7:30 a.m. on November 18, 2011” into Wolfram Alpha, and it would tell you where you were (in this case, flying over Long Beach).
How cool is that? -David
