Conway’s Game of Life

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Life Lexicon

Lightspeed wire

Any wick that can burn non-destructively at the speed of light. Lightspeed wires are a type of reburnable fuse. These are potentially useful for various things, but so far the necessary mechanisms are very large and unwieldy. In October 2002, Jason Summers discovered a lightspeed reaction travelling through an orthogonal chain of beehives. Summers completed a period-1440 lightspeed telegraph based on this reaction in 2003.

Game of Life pattern ’lightspeed_wire_(1)’

A stable lightspeed transceiver mechanism using this same signal reaction, the p1 telegraph, was constructed by Adam P. Goucher in 2010; the bounding boxes of both the transmitter and receiver are over 5000 cells on a side. A more compact periodic high-bandwidth telegraph with a much improved transmission rate was completed by Louis-François Handfield in 2017.

The following diagram shows an older example of a lightspeed wire, with a small defect that travels along it at the speed of light. As of June 2018, no method has been found of creating such a defect in the upstream end of this particular stable wire, or of non-destructively detecting the arrival of the defect and repairing the wire at the downstream end.

Game of Life pattern ’lightspeed_wire_(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

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