Langton's Loops: The cellular automaton that copies itself

An introduction to cellular automata, including Conway's Game of Life and the self-replicating Langton's Loops. Several animations are shown, including the eventual self-destruction that would result if Langton's Loops were allowed to replicate on a large torus (where opposite sides of the grid are joined together).

Ending background music:
  / replicating-loops  

If you're curious to learn more...

Tremendous set of figures (about 1500!) discovered for Conway's Game of Life:
https://conwaylife.com/ref/lexicon/le...

A working Turing machine in Conway's Game of Life?! Yeah:
http://rendell-attic.org/gol/tm.htm

Introductory information on Langton's Loops:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langton...

The full rule set for Langton's Loops:
https://github.com/GollyGang/ruletabl...

Links to rule sets for other interesting cellular automata:
https://github.com/gollygang/ruletabl...

Source code for an example implementation (though not the one used in this video):
https://diga.me.uk/LangtonLoops.html

00:00 Introduction
00:24 Game of Life introduction
01:22 Game of Life rules
02:20 Game of Life in action
04:17 Langton's Loops introduction
05:04 Langton's Loops rules
06:33 Langton's Loops slow, small animation
07:26 Grid with wrap-around (torus)
09:04 Langton's Loops full animation