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)

Salvo

A collection of spaceships, usually gliders, all travelling in the same direction. Any valid glider construction recipe can be partitioned into no more than four salvos. Compare flotilla. In contrast with a convoy, the spaceships in a salvo are usually consumed by the reactions that they cause. Simple examples include block pusher and block pull.

Salvos may be slow or synchronized. The following partially synchronized three-glider salvo produces an LWSS from a block.

Game of Life pattern ’salvo’

The above is a synchronized salvo and not a slow salvo, because the second glider must follow the first with the exact separation shown. The third glider can be considered to be a slow glider, because it will still delete the temporary loaf no matter how many ticks it is delayed. The slow glider construction entry includes an example of a true slow salvo.

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 <>