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)

PF35W

One of the three elementary conduits used in the composite Fx176 Herschel conduit. It converts an input pi-heptomino into an output wing in 35 ticks. In November 2017, Aidan F. Pierce discovered the compact PF35W variant below, which improved the repeat time of the Fx176 to 73 ticks and allowed gliders from following dependent conduits to escape freely:

Game of Life pattern ’PF35W_(1)’

Several variants of the key catalyst are known, including welded additions for the Fx176 that absorb the following Herschel's first natural glider, since a standard fishhook eater doesn't quite fit. The following is a complete Fx176 conduit incorporating the new PF45W:

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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