Life and the elementary automata

Two tiny sets of rules, running in your browser. Draw, press play, and watch structure appear that no rule mentions. Nothing to install, and nothing leaves your machine.

The ideas behind them, and the facts our code measures: Emergence from local rules.

Conway's Life

B3/S23

Each square is alive or dead. Every generation, a dead square with exactly three live neighbours comes alive, and a live square with two or three live neighbours stays alive; every other square is dead in the next generation. Click or drag on the grid to draw.

Pattern Speed 15/s

generation 0live cells 0 160 × 100 · edges wrap round

Elementary automata

RULE 30

One row of cells. Each cell looks at itself and its two neighbours, eight possible patterns, and the rule says which of those patterns make a live cell. Each new generation is drawn below the last, so time runs down the picture. Click a tile to flip that part of the rule: the eight answers, read as a binary number, are the rule's number.

Rule

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