Physics

Purpose

In this dossier, “physics” means space-time properties of pattern persistence under the Flow Lenia update.

Visual Anchors from This Corpus

Translational regime example (crossmap, seed 0):

Constrained/meandering regime example (nnea, seed 0):

Terms

persist: a pattern remains recognizable across many update steps.
invariant: a pattern identity survives controlled changes (for example small perturbations).
perturbation: a deliberate small change to state or parameters.
regime: a recurring dynamical mode, such as fast translation vs low-displacement meandering.

What We Measure Today

Operationally, the current corpus separates regimes with trajectory statistics:

center_velocity: mean translational speed of the center of mass.
path_length / displacement: near 1 implies straight transport; larger values imply meander/looping motion.

Current anchored examples:

crossmap-128-local-20260227-153007, seed 0: center_velocity=0.01027, path/displacement=1.0026.
nnea-128-local-20260227-153006, seed 0: center_velocity=0.00009, path/displacement=9.1293.

What Is Still Conceptual

Prior Lenia literature mentions invariance under scale/transform/deformation. In this dossier, those are research goals, not yet formalized benchmark suites.

Physics is currently partially operationalized:

motion regime separation: implemented,
full invariance test battery (scale/flip/rotate/deformation): planned.

runtime implementation map: ../internals/FlowLeniaImplementationMap.md
artifact contract: ../contracts/ArtifactLayout.md
morphology interpretation: Morphology.md