5 Coolest Things On Earth This Week - GE Reports

This week, a short novel written by an AI program did well in a Japanese literary contest, scientists spotted traces of a possible new particle that could shake the foundations of physics and a team of researchers discovered in the human genome a "nearly intact" genetic blueprint for a 700,000-year-old stowaway virus. A short novel written by a Japanese artificial intelligence software program passed the first screening round for the Nikkei Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award. "The day a computer wrote a novel," the program wrote near the end of the piece, "the computer, placing priority on the pursuit of its own joy, stopped working for humans." A team of scientists from Tufts University and the University of Michigan Health System has found a "nearly intact" genetic copy of an ancient virus that spliced itself into our DNA. The team doesn't rule out the possibility that it could come alive again.