>>6781869well a cellular automaton is a grid of cells. a cell can be on or off (black or white) (more complicated systems allow intermediate states). you start with a e.g. random pattern. Then you feed the system some rules for reproduction, that means, in the next time step, e.g. a white cell neighboured by 2 black cells shall become black, a black cell neighboured by 3 white cell shall become white, the rest should keep their color - but the possibilities for those rules are endless. and you simulate a lot of time steps. And based on the rules for replication you used, sometimes awesome stuff is showing. This thing overall is used for simulation of dynamic systems, e.g. cell populations, hence the (file)name - but wikipedia will give you maybe a better explanation
