It's worth pointing out as an aside that you actually can't rewind the (Conway) game of life: the current state does not contain enough information to recreate

It's worth pointing out as an aside that you actually can't rewind the (Conway) game of life: the current state does not contain enough information to recreate the previous state. The reason is that many states can arise as a result of multiple possible precursor states. Diane's simulation is perhaps similar: a gigantically complex system of cellular automata.