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Speed Of Light (cellular Automaton)
In Conway's Game of Life (and related cellular automata), the speed of light is a propagation rate across the grid of exactly one step (either horizontally, vertically or diagonally) per generation. In a single generation, a cell can only influence its nearest neighbours, and so the speed of light (by analogy with the speed of light in physics) is the maximum rate at which information can propagate. It is therefore an upper bound to the speed at which any pattern can move. Notation As in physics, the speed of light is represented with the letter ''c''. This in turn is used as a reference for describing the average propagation speed of any given type of spaceship. For example, a glider is said to have a speed of ''c''/4, as it takes four generations for a given state to be translated by one cell. Similarly, the "lightweight spaceship" is said to have a speed of ''c''/2, as it takes four generations for a given state to be translated by two cells. Lightspeed propagation While ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conway's Game Of Life
The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input. One interacts with the Game of Life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves. It is Turing complete and can simulate a universal constructor or any other Turing machine. Rules The universe of the Game of Life is an infinite, two-dimensional orthogonal grid of square ''cells'', each of which is in one of two possible states, ''live'' or ''dead'' (or ''populated'' and ''unpopulated'', respectively). Every cell interacts with its eight '' neighbours'', which are the cells that are horizontally, vertically, or diagonally adjacent. At each step in time, the following transitions occur: # Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if by underpopulation. # Any live cell with two or three live neig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cellular Automaton
A cellular automaton (pl. cellular automata, abbrev. CA) is a discrete model of computation studied in automata theory. Cellular automata are also called cellular spaces, tessellation automata, homogeneous structures, cellular structures, tessellation structures, and iterative arrays. Cellular automata have found application in various areas, including physics, theoretical biology and microstructure modeling. A cellular automaton consists of a regular grid of ''cells'', each in one of a finite number of '' states'', such as ''on'' and ''off'' (in contrast to a coupled map lattice). The grid can be in any finite number of dimensions. For each cell, a set of cells called its ''neighborhood'' is defined relative to the specified cell. An initial state (time ''t'' = 0) is selected by assigning a state for each cell. A new ''generation'' is created (advancing ''t'' by 1), according to some fixed ''rule'' (generally, a mathematical function) that determines the new state of e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moore Neighborhood
In cellular automata, the Moore neighborhood is defined on a two-dimensional square lattice and is composed of a central cell and the eight cells that surround it. Name The neighborhood is named after Edward F. Moore, a pioneer of cellular automata theory. Importance It is one of the two most commonly used neighborhood types, the other one being the von Neumann neighborhood, which excludes the corner cells. The well known Conway's Game of Life, for example, uses the Moore neighborhood. It is similar to the notion of 8-connected pixels in computer graphics. The Moore neighbourhood of a cell is the cell itself and the cells at a Chebyshev distance of 1. The concept can be extended to higher dimensions, for example forming a 26-cell cubic neighborhood for a cellular automaton in three dimensions, as used by 3D Life. In dimension ''d,'' where 0 \le d, d \in \mathbb, the size of the neighborhood is 3''d'' − 1. In two dimensions, the number of cells in an ''ex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Speed Of Light
The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted , is a universal physical constant that is important in many areas of physics. The speed of light is exactly equal to ). According to the special theory of relativity, is the upper limit for the speed at which conventional matter or energy (and thus any signal carrying information) can travel through space. All forms of electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, travel at the speed of light. For many practical purposes, light and other electromagnetic waves will appear to propagate instantaneously, but for long distances and very sensitive measurements, their finite speed has noticeable effects. Starlight viewed on Earth left the stars many years ago, allowing humans to study the history of the universe by viewing distant objects. When communicating with distant space probes, it can take minutes to hours for signals to travel from Earth to the spacecraft and vice versa. In computing, the speed of light fixes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Information
Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random, and any observable pattern in any medium can be said to convey some amount of information. Whereas digital signals and other data use discrete signs to convey information, other phenomena and artifacts such as analog signals, poems, pictures, music or other sounds, and currents convey information in a more continuous form. Information is not knowledge itself, but the meaning that may be derived from a representation through interpretation. Information is often processed iteratively: Data available at one step are processed into information to be interpreted and processed at the next step. For example, in written text each symbol or letter conveys information relevant to the word it is part of, each word conveys information rele ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spaceship (cellular Automaton)
In a cellular automaton, a finite pattern is called a spaceship if it reappears after a certain number of generations in the same orientation but in a different position. The smallest such number of generations is called the period of the spaceship. Description The speed of a spaceship is often expressed in terms of ''c'', the metaphorical speed of light (one cell per generation) which in many cellular automata is the fastest that an effect can spread. For example, a glider in Conway's Game of Life is said to have a speed of c/4, as it takes four generations for a given state to be translated by one cell. Similarly, the ''lightweight spaceship'' is said to have a speed of c/2, as it takes four generations for a given state to be translated by two cells. More generally, if a spaceship in a 2D automaton with the Moore neighborhood is translated by (x, y) after n generations, then the speed v is defined as: This notation can be readily generalised to cellular automata with di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glider (Conway's Life)
The glider is a pattern that travels across the board in Conway's Game of Life. It was first discovered by Richard K. Guy in 1969, while John Conway's group was attempting to track the evolution of the R-pentomino. Gliders are the smallest spaceships, and they travel diagonally at a speed of one cell every four generations, or c/4. The glider is often produced from randomly generated starting configurations. The name comes from the fact that, after two steps, the glider pattern repeats its configuration with a glide reflection symmetry. After four steps and two glide reflections, it returns to its original orientation. John Conway remarked that he wished he hadn't called it the glider. The game was developed before the widespread use of interactive computers, and after seeing it animated, he feels the glider looks more like an ant walking across the plane. Importance Gliders are important to the Game of Life because they are easily produced, can be collided with each other ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seeds (cellular Automaton)
Seeds is a cellular automaton in the same family as the Game of Life, initially investigated by Brian Silverman and named by Mirek Wójtowicz. It consists of an infinite two-dimensional grid of cells, each of which may be in one of two states: ''on'' or ''off''. Each cell is considered to have eight neighbors (Moore neighborhood), as in Life. In each time step, a cell turns on or is "born" if it was off or "dead" but had exactly two neighbors that were on; all other cells turn off. Thus, in the notation describing the family of cellular automata containing Life, it is described by the rule B2/S. In Game of Life terminology, a pattern in which all cells that were on turn off at each step is called a ''phoenix''. All patterns in Seeds have this form. Even though all live cells are constantly dying, the small birth requirement of two cells means that nearly every pattern in Seeds explodes into a chaotic mess that grows to cover the entire universe. Thus, in Wolfram's classificatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Still Life (cellular Automaton)
In Conway's Game of Life and other cellular automata, a still life is a pattern that does not change from one generation to the next. The term comes from the art world where a still life painting or photograph depicts an inanimate scene. In cellular automata, a still life can be thought of as an oscillator with unit period. Classification A pseudo still life consists of two or more adjacent islands ( connected components) which can be partitioned (either individually or as sets) into non-interacting subparts, which are also still lifes. This compares with a strict still life, which may not be partitioned in this way. A strict still life may have only a single island, or it may have multiple islands that depend on one another for stability, and thus cannot be decomposed. The distinction between the two is not always obvious, as a strict still life may have multiple connected components all of which are needed for its stability. However, it is possible to determine whether a still l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faster Than Light
Faster-than-light (also FTL, superluminal or supercausal) travel and communication are the conjectural propagation of matter or information faster than the speed of light (). The special theory of relativity implies that only particles with zero rest mass (i.e., photons) may travel ''at'' the speed of light, and that nothing may travel faster. Particles whose speed exceeds that of light (tachyons) have been hypothesized, but their existence would violate causality and would imply time travel. The scientific consensus is that they do not exist. "Apparent" or "effective" FTL, on the other hand, depends on the hypothesis that unusually distorted regions of spacetime might permit matter to reach distant locations in less time than light could in normal ("undistorted") spacetime. As of the 21st century, according to current scientific theories, matter is required to travel at slower-than-light (also STL or subluminal) speed with respect to the locally distorted spacetime region. Appar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
