What to watch
- It expands slowly before producing a much larger cloud.
- The population curve rises and falls many times.
- It needs a roomy board to avoid clipping the natural evolution.
Methuselahs
Acorn
A seven-cell seed with a famously long chaotic evolution.
Acorn is one of the most studied small methuselahs because its minimal beginning produces a large and intricate reaction field.
- Category
- Methuselahs
- Period
- Long-lived seed
- Movement
- bounded
- Population
- 7 cells
- Bounding box
- 7 x 3
- Known since
- 1971
How to use it
Use it for long-run demonstrations and population history discussions.
Open the pattern in the lab, reduce the speed, and use single-step mode when a phase change is hard to see. The green preview marks births in the next generation; red outlines mark live cells that will die.