angton's Antangton's AntIf you see nothing but text above this line, your browser probably doesn't support Java.
his is one of the simplest of cellular automata. The Ant walks on a two-dimensional grid of white squares, heading
North to begin. Each square on which it lands changes colour, either from white to black or the reverse. If the Ant lands
on a black square, it turns right. If it lands on a white square, it turns left.
In spite of the simplicity of the rules, the Ant's behaviour is surprisingly complicated, and in some respects intractable in prediction. For instance, the last I'd heard, no one could prove that the Ant always starts to build a "highway" in the general case of a variegated grid. It always SEEMS to, but it hasn't been proved.
If we have so much trouble predicting the future of a little Universe whose rules are absolutley clear and very simple, what chance do we have here on Earth?