Computational Life Reactor
Can Life Start from Noise?
Computational Life Reactor (CLR) is an interactive browser-based implementation of the computational-life experiments studied by Google researcher Blaise Agüera y Arcas and collaborators.
Start Computational Life Reactor →
The CLR interface combines simulation controls with live population and measurement visualizations.
Here's how it works: random byte tapes are repeatedly paired and executed using BFF, a ten-instruction, Brainfuck-derived language with two data heads and copy operations. Each tape can act as both program and data, allowing self-replicating programs to emerge without a fitness function or explicit selection process. Here, "life" refers to computational systems that exhibit self-replication; CLR does not model biological life. CLR provides live population visualizations, frequency and compression measurements, and a step-by-step execution sampler. The simulation runs locally using WebAssembly and parallel browser workers.
YouTube Videos
- A concise introduction to the topic and CLR by Johannes Martin (Number Cruncher): Watch on YouTube
- A talk by Blaise Agüera y Arcas: Watch on Machine Learning Street Talk
Open Source
The source code is available in the Computational Life Reactor GitHub repository.