the-real-numbers:

the-real-numbers:

So I was looking up a certain kind of cellular automata on Wikipedia out of curiosity, and then I ended up seeing a link for something called “billiard ball computers”.

So basically it’s a theoretical construction to show nature has results that can be reversible or something. You do have to let the billiards be frictionless, though. So it’s not like you could implement this in real lif-

Um…

This guy???

Wait,, just look at the pictures they have though. The captions refer to crab groups as “swarm balls”, which is a very endearing term IMO.

Unfortunately, these gates take up a lot of space, so to do big computations you’d need lots of crabs and several hundred feet of cardboard.

Me: You want to google something? Sure, let me fire up my crabputer…

Me: *dumps a bucket of soldier crabs into an acre-wide rat maze*

Me: it takes them a while to find the internet, so sit tight for a bit.