Cellular Automaton

This is an Applet for a universal cellular automaton. It wrote it to prove the interesting theories in the book "A new kind of science", by Stephen Wolfram (the inventor of Mathematica). This Applet is universal, because you can edit the rules instead of having some hardcoded rules. In the rule editor you can specify the color of the resulting cell, depending on the current cell color and neighbour cell colors. All rules are applied parallel from one to the next generation.

You can enter a number instead of editing with the mouse, because every rule is coded as one bit. There are many different automatons you can test with the Applet:

grid geometry different automatons
squares 2^32 = 4294967296
hexagons 2^128 = 340282366920938463463374607431768211456
squares with 8 neighbours 2^512 = 13407807929942597099574024998205846127479365820592393377723561443721\
76403007354697680187429816690342769003185818648605085375388281194656\
9946433649006084096

Here are some interesting rules. Copy and paste it to the rules textbox, select the grid geometry and click the Apply button.

reference grid geometry rule
"A new kind of science", page 371: If a cell is white, it becomes black, if exactly one of its neighbours is black. Once a cell is black, it remains black forever. hexagons 340282366920938463444927863362353692950
Conway's game of life squares with 8 neighbours 3121796387206642884643857416353388816364758858874716286199733
0472446065614189877003226114647900052422807841320892218511210
96915552864518716024960 (with line breaks, paste in as one line)
a random squares test squares 71467286

Try to click and drag in the Applet area! Click the Apply button to clear the output.

That's the source: Automaton.java und AutomatonCanvas.java


30. Mai 2002, Frank Buß