Revisiting Barricelli's Cellular Automata: Spontaneous Generation of Life
2025-01-07
This article explores the work of Nils Aall Barricelli, who pioneered cellular automata 15 years before John Conway. Barricelli's 'symbioorganisms' model, in a finite, circular 1D space, simulates the movement and interaction of different elements through simple rules of collision elimination, positional replication, and mutation. The simulations reveal that even with simple rules, stable periodic patterns spontaneously emerge, resembling the spontaneous generation of life. The author delves into the stability of these patterns and proposes combining early universe simulations with simulations of abiogenesis to find more efficient ways to explore life's origins.
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