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)

Blinker puffer

Any puffer whose output is blinkers. However, the term is particularly used for p8 c/2 puffers. The first such blinker puffer was found by Robert Wainwright in 1984, and was unexpectedly simple:

Game of Life pattern ’blinker_puffer_(1)’

Since then many more blinker puffers have been found. The following one was found by David Bell in 1992 when he was trying to extend an x66:

Game of Life pattern ’blinker_puffer_(2)’

The importance of this larger blinker puffer (and others like it), is that the engine which produces the blinker output is only p4. The blinker row produced by the puffer can easily be ignited, and the resulting blinker fuse burns cleanly with a speed of 2c/3. When the burning catches up to the engine, it causes a phase change in the puffer. This fact allows p8 blinker puffers to be used to construct rakes of all periods which are large multiples of four.

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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