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)

Converter

A conduit in which the input object is not of the same type as the output object. This term tends to be preferred when either the input object or the output object is a spaceship.

The following diagram shows a p8 pi-heptomino-to-HWSS converter. This was originally found by Dave Buckingham in a larger form (using a figure-8 instead of the boat). The improvement shown here is by Bill Gosper (August 1996). Dieter Leithner has since found (much larger) oscillators of periods 44, 46 and 60 that can be used instead of the Kok's galaxy.

Game of Life pattern ’converter_(1)’

For another periodic converter, see the glider-to-LWSS example in queen bee shuttle pair. However, many converters are stable. Examples of elementary conduit converters include BFx59H, 135-degree MWSS-to-G, and 45-degree MWSS-to-G.

The earliest and simplest stable converters known are shown below. These are an HWSS-to-loaf, MWSS-to-beehive, and LWSS-to-blinker. These can serve as memory cells, or as the first steps in constructing objects using salvos.

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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