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)

Queen bee shuttle pair

Any arrangement of two queen bee shuttles such that the two beehives created between them are consumed in some way. There are many ways that the two shuttles can be placed, either head-to-head, or else at right angles. The most well-known and useful arrangement results in the Gosper glider gun.

Other arrangements don't create any lasting output, but create large sparks which can perturb objects (especially gliders) in various ways. For example, one arrangement of a queen bee shuttle pair was used in the original unit Life cell as a memory cell. Here an input glider is converted into a block, which remains until it is deleted by a glider on a right-angled path.

Game of Life pattern ’queen_bee_shuttle_pair’

See p690 gun and metamorphosis II for two more examples.

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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