Rule 90

Common card · No. 472382

In the mathematical study of cellular automata, Rule 90 is an elementary cellular automaton based on the exclusive or function. It consists of a one-dimensional array of cells, each of which can hold either a 0 or a 1 value. In each time step all values are simultaneously replaced by the XOR of their two neighboring values. Martin, Odlyzko & Wolfram (1984) call it "the simplest non-trivial cellular automaton", and it is described extensively in Stephen Wolfram's 2002 book A New Kind of Science. When started from a single live cell, Rule 90 has a time-space diagram in the form of a Sierpiński triangle. The behavior of any other configuration can be explained as a superposition of copies of this pattern, combined using the exclusive or function. Any configuration with only finitely many nonzero cells becomes a replicator that eventually fills the array with copies of itself. When Rule 90 is started from a random initial configuration, its configuration remains random at each time step. Its...

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