Help, java newbie

Hi, I started to learn java, its great and everything, but I still have not gotten what it can do.
The biggest thing with java is that its platform-independent, but so is php isn't it?
I am trying to figure out what Java can really do that other programing languages cannot do.
Thanks.

Java can do everything PHP can do and virtually everything that C++ can do with natively-compiled efficiency, cross-platform. That's the difference between Java and the other programming languages.