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)

Lx200

A composite conduit, one of the original sixteen Herschel conduits, discovered by Paul Callahan in June 1997. It is made up of two elementary conduits, HL141B + BFx59H. The Lx200 and F166 conduits are the two original dependent conduits (several more have since been discovered.) After 200 ticks, it produces an inverted Herschel turned 90 degrees counterclockwise at (17, -40) relative to the input. Its recovery time is 90 ticks. It can be made Spartan by replacing the snakes with eater1s in one of two orientations. A ghost Herschel in the pattern below marks the output location:

Game of Life pattern ’Lx200’

The input shown here is a Herschel great-grandparent, since the input reaction is catalysed by the transparent block before the Herschel's standard form can appear.

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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