 |
| John Horton Conway |
This
cellular automaton acts on a potentially infinite two-dimensional space,
divided into square cells. In each cell there is a simple automaton, or if you
want, a program with two states that we can call alive and dead,
or 1 and 0. The program in each cell takes as input its own state and the
states of its eight neighbors. If it is alive (i.e. in state 1) and two or
three of its neighbors are alive, in the next instant it will still be alive.
If it is dead (in state 0) and exactly three of its neighbors are alive, in the
next instant it will become alive. In any other case, it will become dead.
Let's look at a figure to make it clearer:
