Forge Capsule

Cellular Automata: Conway's Life, Rule 110, and Emergent Complexity

Cellular automaton: grid of cells, each in finite states, evolving by local rules. 1D elementary CA: 8 possible rules (Rule 30, 90, 110, 184). Rule 110: Turing complete (Cook 2004). Conway's Game of Life: B3/S23 — birth at 3 neighbors, survival at 2-3. Gliders, spaceships, oscillators. Life is also Turing complete. Wolfram classification: I (fixed), II (periodic), III (chaotic/random), IV (complex/edge of chaos). Langton's ant: 2-state rule on 2D grid, produces 'highway' after ~10,000 steps. Random Boolean networks (Kauffman): K=2 regime near criticality. Applications: traffic flow, crystal growth, epidemics on lattices. Forge: cellular automata capsules in computation theory and biology intersection.