You are currently browsing the daily archive for October 18th, 2007.
The web seems to be overflowing with cool stuff these days. If you’re a fan of cellular automata like me, Mushroom Life will provide at least a few minutes of time-wasting fun. Click on the square to add a few initial mushrooms, perhaps trying one of the patterns they have listed. The image below is the result after a few hundred generations from the simplest example pattern.
One of the coolest things in the world to me are fairy rings: naturally occurring circles of mushrooms. There are a couple of theories about why these rings occur. The first theory is that a spore pushes out fungal threads in all directions as it begins to grow underground. As it grows larger, the central part dies off, what’s left is a ring. The other theory is that if neighboring groups of genetically identical mushrooms connect and form an oval or arc, they continue to grow about the center of this object.
