Conway’s Game of Life

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Life Lexicon

This Life lexicon is compiled by Stephen A. Silver from various sources and may be copied, modified and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported licence. See the original credit page for all credits and the original download location. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Herschel receiver

Any circuit that converts a tandem glider into a Herschel signal. The following diagram shows a pattern found by Paul Callahan in 1996, as part of the first stable glider reflector. Used as a receiver, it converts two parallel input gliders (with path separations of 2, 5, or 6) to an R-pentomino. The signal is then converted to a Herschel by one of several known mechanisms, the first of which was found by Dave Buckingham way back in 1972. The second is elementary conduit RF48H, found by Stephen Silver in October 1997. The receiver version shown below uses Buckingham's R-to-Herschel converter, which is made up of elementary conduit RF28B followed by BFx59H.

Game of Life pattern ’Herschel_receiver’

Game of Life Explanation

The Game of Life is not your typical computer game. It is a cellular automaton, and was invented by Cambridge mathematician John Conway.

This game became widely known when it was mentioned in an article published by Scientific American in 1970. It consists of a grid of cells which, based on a few mathematical rules, can live, die or multiply. Depending on the initial conditions, the cells form various patterns throughout the course of the game.

Rules

For a space that is populated:
Examples

Each cell with one or no neighbors dies, as if by solitude.

Each cell with four or more neighbors dies, as if by overpopulation.

Each cell with two or three neighbors survives.

For a space that is empty or unpopulated:

Each cell with three neighbors becomes populated.

More information

Video’s about the Game of Life

Stephen Hawkings The Meaning of Life (John Conway's Game of Life segment)
The rules are explained in Stephen Hawkings’ documentary The Meaning of Life
Inventing Game of Life (John Conway) - Numberphile
John Conway himself talks about the Game of Life

Interesting articles about John Conway

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