John Horton Conway invented a cellular automata game called LIFE. The
game received publicity in the October 1970 issue of Scientific American
in an article by Martin Gardner in the Mathematical Games section.
Essentially you have a rectangular array of cells, which can be in
either of two states: 'dead' (or 'off' or '0'), or 'alive' (or 'on' or
'1'). Conway's rules for state transitions were:
1) If two neighboring cells are '1', the cell doesn't change state
2) If three neighboring cells are '1', the cell transitions to or stays
in state '1'
3) For all other cases, the cell transitions to or stays in state '0'
When this game is run, complex patterns can emerge from simpler ones in
a dynamic fashion. So, my question is, can this game generate SAS's?
Here are some useful web sites for starters:
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~icsrsss/jscript/GameOfLife.html
http://www.kasprzyk.demon.co.uk/www/WhatisAL.html
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hoskinso/life/
http://www.eskimo.net/~johnws/Life.html
Fred
Received on Sat Dec 04 1999 - 13:20:44 PST