2010 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
The B36/S125 “2x2” Life-Like Cellular Automaton
Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.
Select sections of text to find matching patents with Artificial Intelligence. powered by
Select sections of text to find additional relevant content using AI-assisted search. powered by
The B36/S125 (or “2x2”) cellular automaton is one that takes place on a 2D square lattice much like Conway’s Game of Life. Although it exhibits high-level behaviour that is similar to Life, such as chaotic but eventually stable evolution and the existence of a natural diagonal glider, the individual objects that the rule contains generally look very different from their Life counterparts. In this article, a history of notable discoveries in the 2x2 rule is provided, and the fundamental patterns of the automaton are described. Some theoretical results are derived along the way, including a proof that the speed limits for diagonal and orthogonal spaceships in this rule are
c
/3 and
c
/2, respectively. A Margolus block cellular automaton that 2x2 emulates is investigated, and in particular a family of oscillators made up entirely of 2×2 blocks are analyzed and used to show that there exist oscillators with period 2
ℓ
(2
k
−1) for any integers
k
,
ℓ
≥1.