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Cellular Automata are animate life-like processes formed from a few simple rules. It is a powerful example of emergence – How very simple rules can create very complex effects.

We see this in nature, with the patterns that emerge within a flock of starlings, or the procedural algorithm hidden in the structure of a termite nest.

We even see similar effects that can spontaneously emerge from chemical interactions, called Turing Patterns. These drive morphogenesis, the process by which an organism grows and develops, resulting in everything from a tiger's stripes, to the patterns in a butterfly's wings.

The physical properties of matter, in a chemical interaction, can execute mathematical algorithms. These procedural processes enable biology to emerge out of chemistry.

If you think about it, fire is almost alive, in a sense. It seeks energy from fuel and oxygen, it seeks to preserve itself from being cooled (entropy) beyond an irrecoverable point, and it expands its area of activity if allowed. The laws of thermodynamics themselves enable the emergent property of fire. Similarly, a chemical 'fire', that happens to get configured with the right extended rule-sets, can create life.

Somewhere, in some 'primordial soup', the mathematics inherent to chemistry, in just the right combination, enabled something akin to cellular automata to spontaneously emerge, and from that seed came all of the life on this planet.

We can simulate something like this in silicon; Conway's Game of Life is the classic implementation. The Game of Life allows us to test different rules. Rule 110 is Turing Complete, meaning that it can function as a computer. Other rules can enable Self-Organised Criticality, suspected to be a crucial component in enabling cell membranes, cellular apparatus, intelligence, consciousness, and even multi-cellular interactions.

However, the Game of Life is state-driven – It advances in small ticks of time, and in a strict, limited matrix of little squares. Lenia is a beautiful contemporary update that sidesteps these limitations to create eerily lifelike virtual protocell-like entities.

Have a play with it in your browser, and marvel at the strange math that took us to where we are today, and also leads us to our ultimate destiny...

Link : https://chakazul.github.io/Lenia/JavaScript/Lenia.html