Creating an Artificial World with a New Kind of Cellular Automata

Abstract: This paper describes a new concept of cellular automaton (CA). XCA consists of a set of arcs (edges) that correspond to cells in CA. At a particular time, the arcs are connected to a directed graph. With each time step, the arcs exchange their neighbors (adjacent arcs) according to rules that depend on the statuses of the adjacent arcs. An XCA can be used to simulate an artificial world beginning with a Big Bang. In contrast to an CA, an XCA does not require a grid. However, it can create one, just as the real universe after the Big Bang generated its own space, which had not excisted previously. Examples using different rules reveal the manifold nature of the XCA concept. Similar to John Conway s well-known The Game of Life simulates birth, survival, and death, this game can simulate a system that begins from a singularity, and evolves into a complex space.