Wireworld Screensaver
Wireworld is a cellular automaton with four real states — empty, wire, electron head and electron tail. Electron heads move forward along wires each tick, leaving a tail behind, and wires with exactly one or two head neighbors become heads themselves — simple rules that are powerful enough to build real working logic gates.
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How the Wireworld screensaver works
Every cell is one of four states: empty, conductive wire, an electron head, or an electron tail.
Each tick, an electron head always becomes a tail; a tail always becomes ordinary wire.
A wire cell becomes a new electron head only if exactly one or two of its neighbors are currently electron heads — otherwise it stays wire.
That single rule is enough to route, split, merge and even gate real streams of "electrons" — which is why Wireworld can build genuine logic circuits.
A worked example
Watch a bright electron head race along a wire trail, always followed one tick behind by a dimmer tail. Where two wires cross or merge, watch how heads combine or cancel depending on the exact timing — the same behavior real Wireworld logic gates depend on.
Settings & tips
- Electron color recolours the moving heads and their dimmer tails.
- Ticks / sec controls how fast the simulation advances.
- The board reseeds with a fresh wire layout once activity dies down.
Frequently asked questions
- Can Wireworld really compute?
- Yes — its rules are Turing-complete; hobbyists have built real adders and even small CPUs from wire layouts like this one.
- What are the four colors?
- Background (empty), wire, a bright electron head, and a dimmer trailing electron tail.
- Is a key needed?
- No — it's a pure local computation.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.