Yesterday, we used the “Diamoeba” cellular automaton to give an example of CA dynamics. In that example, the boundary between a “diamond” of live cells and the surrounding dead cells fluctuated chaotically. A different boundary behaviour is exemplified by the rule B356/S014678, in which a random soup quickly will produce a large (possibly disconnected) region of mostly living cells surrounded by mostly dead cells (and a large number of small still-lifes and the occasional oscillator). The boundary of the large region is “burning”, and the total size of the region varies slowly with time:

A video is available (MP4, 36.3 MB) showing the first 3800 generations. If this particular simulation is allowed to proceed, the living pixels will win the battle. Indeed, just before generation 15000, the entire space consists of the region of living cells.