Morphogenesis
Watching Turing patterns emerge from reaction and diffusion
In 1952, Alan Turing proposed that simple chemical reactions could spontaneously produce the spots, stripes and spirals found throughout nature. This interactive visualiser simulates the Gray-Scott reaction-diffusion model in real time, letting you watch complexity emerge from two simple rules: chemicals spread out, and chemicals react.
The Challenge
How do leopards get their spots? Why do zebras have stripes? These patterns seem impossibly complex, yet Turing showed they could emerge from remarkably simple chemistry. The challenge is making this insight visceral — not just understood intellectually, but felt through direct manipulation.
Background
Reaction-diffusion systems describe how chemicals spread and interact over space and time. Turing's key insight was that if two chemicals diffuse at different rates, small random fluctuations can amplify into stable patterns. The faster-diffusing chemical acts as an inhibitor, while the slower one acts as an activator.
The Gray-Scott model is a specific reaction-diffusion system that produces an astonishing variety of patterns — from spots to stripes to labyrinthine waves — depending on just two parameters: the feed rate (how fast U is added) and the kill rate (how fast V is removed).
Approach
The visualiser uses WebGL2 to run the simulation entirely on the GPU. Each frame, a fragment shader computes the next state of every pixel in parallel, using float textures for numerical precision. The user can paint chemicals directly onto the canvas and adjust the feed and kill rates in real time.
A preset system offers named patterns (mitosis, coral, waves, etc.) that correspond to specific parameter regions in the Gray-Scott phase space.
Technology
- React
- WebGL2
- GLSL Shaders
- Float Framebuffers