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Carlo Beenakker
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Q: Does the temporal translation symmetry of Conway's universe give rise to a conserved quantity, that we might be able to call an "energy"?

As noticed in the earliest studies of Conway's Game of Life, it has no local conservation law --- it is not possible to define a locally conserved energy functional. 

The dynamics does have temporal translation symmetry, but Noether's theorem (which ties a symmetry to a conservation law) does not apply firstly because the dynamics is discretized in space and time. Noether's theorem requires that, and secondly because the dynamics is obtained fromnot based on a differentiable Lagrangian, which. So even a generalization along the Gamelines of Life lacksSmoothLife would not be sufficient to apply Noether's theorem.

Q: Does the temporal translation symmetry of Conway's universe give rise to a conserved quantity, that we might be able to call an "energy"?

As noticed in the earliest studies of Conway's Game of Life, it has no local conservation law --- it is not possible to define a locally conserved energy functional. The dynamics does have temporal translation symmetry, but Noether's theorem (which ties a symmetry to a conservation law) does not apply because the dynamics is discretized in space and time. Noether's theorem requires that the dynamics is obtained from a differentiable Lagrangian, which the Game of Life lacks.

Q: Does the temporal translation symmetry of Conway's universe give rise to a conserved quantity, that we might be able to call an "energy"?

As noticed in the earliest studies of Conway's Game of Life, it has no local conservation law --- it is not possible to define a locally conserved energy functional. 

The dynamics does have temporal translation symmetry, but Noether's theorem (which ties a symmetry to a conservation law) does not apply firstly because the dynamics is discretized in space and time, and secondly because the dynamics is not based on a Lagrangian. So even a generalization along the lines of SmoothLife would not be sufficient to apply Noether's theorem.

Source Link
Carlo Beenakker
  • 188.3k
  • 18
  • 448
  • 651

Q: Does the temporal translation symmetry of Conway's universe give rise to a conserved quantity, that we might be able to call an "energy"?

As noticed in the earliest studies of Conway's Game of Life, it has no local conservation law --- it is not possible to define a locally conserved energy functional. The dynamics does have temporal translation symmetry, but Noether's theorem (which ties a symmetry to a conservation law) does not apply because the dynamics is discretized in space and time. Noether's theorem requires that the dynamics is obtained from a differentiable Lagrangian, which the Game of Life lacks.