Conway’s Game of Life

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Life Lexicon

Tanner's p46

An oscillator found by Tanner Jacobi on 20 October 2017. This oscillator hassles an evolving pi-heptomino to produce an phi spark. The spark is very accessible and is able to perturb many things.

Game of Life pattern ’Tanners_p46’

The snakes can be replaced with eaters to form a slightly smaller version, as shown in the p46 MWSS gun in gliderless

The period of this new oscillator is the same as the old twin bees shuttle, and so this is able to expand the known p46 technology. For example, a p46 glider gun can be made from a Tanner's p46 and just one of the twin bees shuttles.

Acting on their own, two copies of Tanner's p46 placed at right angles to each other with their sparks interacting can produce two different p46 glider guns and a gliderless p46 MWSS gun. See p46 gun and gliderless for two of these. These are the first p46 guns found which do not use a twin bees shuttle at all.

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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