Conway’s Game of Life

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Life Lexicon

Eater2

This eater was found by Dave Buckingham in the 1970s. Mostly it works like the ordinary eater1 but with two slight differences that make it useful despite its size: it takes longer to recover from each bite, and it can eat objects appearing at two different positions.

Game of Life pattern ’eater2_(1)’

The first property means that, among other things, it can eat a glider in a position that would destroy an eater1. This novel glider-eating action is occasionally of use in itself, and combined with the symmetry means that an eater2 can eat gliders travelling along four adjacent glider lanes, as shown below.

The following eater2 variant (Stephen Silver, May 1998) can be useful for obtaining smaller bounding boxes. A more compact variant with the same purpose can be seen under gliderless.

Game of Life pattern ’eater2_(2)’

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

Implemented by Edwin Martin <>