Can the universe be considered to be a CA?
Contributions by: Chris Langton cgl@t13.Lanl.GOV There is a great collection of papers [unk82]. These are the proceedings of a conference on the Physics of Computation and Computational models of Physics. They contain some classic papers, including many that view the universe as a CA. Authors include Toffoli, Fredkin, Bennett, Landauer, Hillis, Feynman, Wheeler, and so forth. There is a fascinating paper by Marvin Minsky entitled “Cellular Vacuum” in which he shows that a version of relativity holds in CA’s as clocks (oscillators) approach the speed of light – they slow down, but not in the same way that they do in continuous space. All in all, this collection is a must for those interested in computational aspects of the physical universe or in the physics of computation.
