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)

P44 MWSS gun

A gun discovered by Dieter Leithner in April 1997, in a somewhat larger form. This was the smallest known gliderless gun and smallest known MWSS gun until the construction in 2017 of the gun shown under gliderless, based on Tanner's p46.

The p44 MWSS gun is based on a p44 oscillator discovered by Dave Buckingham in early 1992, shown here in an improved form found in January 2005 by Jason Summers using a new p4 sparker by Nicolay Beluchenko. A glider shape appears in this gun for three consecutive generations, but always as part of a larger cluster, so even a purist would regard this gun as gliderless.

Game of Life pattern ’p44_MWSS_gun’

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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