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)

P46 gun

A glider gun which has true-period 46. The first one found was the new gun by Bill Gosper in 1971. Prior to the discovery of Tanner's p46 in October 2017, all known p46 guns were made from two or more twin bees shuttles that interact (e.g., see twin bees shuttle pair). See edge shooter and double-barrelled for two more of these.

On 21 October 2017 Heinrich Koenig found a glider gun using two copies of Tanner's p46 placed at right angles to each other. This is the first p46 gun found which makes no use of the twin bees shuttle.

Game of Life pattern ’p46_gun’

See gliderless for a MWSS gun also made using two copies of Tanner's p46.

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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