Langton's Ant in a Loop

OK, if you've found this you've probably heard of Langton's Ant. So, here's a question for anyone out there: why do these two ants do this? As in, why don't they just devolve from the highway to the chaos bit and then not go in two separate directions? I get it, in a "hmmm, alright, it makes sense" sort of way, but not well enough to explain it or to properly understand it. I also don't want to assume anything.

I ran it from Saturday night to Monday night, and it was still stuck in this loop thing. Maybe I'm being retarded. I don't know, but the possibility is high I am. Can anyone answer?

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• langton's
• ant

[masterjamie9]

wow thats very cool!

[contenteddrone]

This often happens with two ants. The reason is that if you tell a single ant to turn around 180 degrees, he will then eat up his own path. If two ants meet each other's paths this can have the same effect. However, this doesn't always happen (sometimes the ants race off to infinity) and I can't predict what will happen without just running the simulation - that's chaos for you!

[JDLupus]

The blue ant doesn't create any white squares and vice versa... it's kinda neat that they meet each-other and then each each-other's "food" but if it's a given that they'll continually meet each-other then it's a given that they'll loop.

[Nurielpl]

Whoa! The blue ant is devouring white ant's highway again and again o_O.

[robots42]

Are you a Mac user because the blue is not easy to see?

Anyway what are the rules and what was the initial condition?

[123BR321]

What do you mean by "loop thing"?