Cellular automaton
From Conservapedia

A two-dimensional cyclic cellular automaton with 16 states, on a 300×300 torus, after 400 steps starting from a random initial configuration. At this stage in the automaton's evolution, three different types of pattern can be seen: random fields similar to the starting configuration, large blocks of color, and spirals. Eventually the spirals will take over the entire field.
A cellular automaton is a 4-tuple , where:
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is a lattice.
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is a finite set of cell states or values.
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is the finite neighborhood.
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is the transition function.
The lattice is a grid filled with cells, each cell is uniquely identified by its coordinates and value. The cellular automaton evolves via the transition function with respect to the discrete time variable.
Lattice-Gas Cellular Automatons can be used to model physical systems such as fluid and biological systems. Mathematica uses a cellular automatons as a random number generator.
Further reading
- Cellular Automaton Fluids: Basic Theory, Stephen Wolfram, 1986.
- Random Sequence Generation by Cellular Automata, Stephen Wolfram, 1986.
- Thermodynamics and Hydrodynamics of Cellular Automata, Stephen Wolfram, 1985.
- Cryptography with Cellular Automata, Stephen Wolfram, 1986.