Notes

Chapter 6: Starting from Randomness

Section 2: Four Classes of Behavior


3D class 4 [cellular automaton] rules

With a cubic lattice of the type shown on page 183, and with updating rules of the form

LifeStep3D[{p_, q_, r_}, a_List] := MapThread[If[#1 1 && p #2 q || #2 r, 1, 0]&, {a, Sum[RotateLeft[a, {i, j, k}], {i, -1, 1}, {j, -1, 1}, {k, -1, 1}] - a}, 3]

Carter Bays discovered between 1986 and 1990 the three examples {5, 7, 6}, {4, 5, 5}, and {5, 6, 5}. The pictures below show successive steps in the evolution of a moving structure in the second of these rules.



Image Source Notebooks:

From Stephen Wolfram: A New Kind of Science [citation]