Langton's loops
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Langton's loops are a particular "species" of artificial life first conceived by Christopher Langton. The loops, which are simulated in a cellular automaton space, consist of a "sheath" of cells surrounding the genetic information, which flows continuously around the loop. Each instruction in turn collides with a particular site on the sheath, causing the loop to extend an "arm" (or pseudopod), which will become the daughter loop. The "genes" then enter the arm and instruct it to make three left turns, completing the loop, which then disconnects from its parent.
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[edit] Encoding of the Genome
The loops' genetic code is stored as a series of nonzero-zero pairs. The standard loop's genome is, starting from the bottom left corner (see picture): 0710710711111041041071071071.
[edit] Colonies
Because of a particular property of the loops' "pseudopodia", they are unable to reproduce into the space occupied by another loop. Thus, once a loop is surrounded, it is incapable of reproducing, resulting in a coral-like colony with a thin layer of reproducing organisms surrounding a core of inactive "dead" organisms. Unless provided unbounded space, the colony's size will be limited. The maximum population will be asymptotic to 
, where A is the total area of the space in cells.
[edit] The Langton Cellular Automaton
The cellular automaton upon which the loops are based is an 8-state, nearest neighbor automaton utilizing the Moore neighborhood.
