Can SAT instances be solved using cellular automata? I'm a high school student, and I have to write a 4000-word research paper on mathematics (as part of the IB Diploma Programme). Among my potential topics were cellular automata and the Boolean satisfiability problem, but then I thought that maybe there was a connection between the two. Variables in Boolean expressions can be True or False; cells in cellular automata can be "On" or "Off". Also, the state of some variables in Boolean expressions can depend on that of other variables (e.g. the output of a Boolean function), while the state of cells in cellular automata depend on that of its neighbors.
Would it be possible to use cellular automata to solve a satisfiablity instance? If so, how, and where can I find helpful/relevant information?
Thanks in advance!

The simple answer is Yes. Can you do it in a simple way? probably not. Cook showed in 2004 that you can indeed compute anything that a turing-machine could on elemetry celular automata using Rule 110 and careful selection of start conditions. There is probably no simple rule or start conditions to do this though. 
see: http://blog.barvinograd.com/2012/11/cyclic-tag-system-1-line-of-turing-complete-code/ for more details.
