Self-Organization and Phase Transitions in Driven Cellular Automata

The Game of Life (GoL) cellular automaton is modified to inject order during execution of the state transition algorithm by making selected stable structures permanently active while interacting with normal active sites to create novel structures. A survey of the modified automaton's phenomenology and an analysis of its dynamics are presented in the context of the physics of the self-organization of matter by viewing the GoL as an artificial chemistry. These new structures become seeds for additional phases of structure building, analogous to nature's gravitational and thermodynamic churning of the geosphere that created material structures in phases, beginning the transition from geochemistry to prebiotic chemistry and laying foundational substrates for life-enabling organizational processes in an emerging biosphere. Evidence of selective self-assembly during phase transitions is reported where several GoL still life structures, configured as permanently active seeds evolving with random collections of active sites, resulted in geometrically identical structures as the GoL reached an equilibrium state of static density.