See it in action here.
From wikipedia:
A cellular automaton is a discrete model studied in computer science, mathematics, physics, complexity science, theoretical biology and microstructure modeling.
A cellular automaton consists of a regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states, such as on and off. For each cell, a set of cells called its neighborhood is defined relative to the specified cell. An initial state (time t = 0) is selected by assigning a state for each cell. A new generation is created (advancing t by 1), according to some fixed rule that determines the new state of each cell in terms of the current state of the cell and the states of the cells in its neighborhood.
Typically, the rule for updating the state of cells is the same for each cell and does not change over time, and is applied to the whole grid simultaneously.
The pattern chosen for modelling is available here | rule no: 73.