Conway’s Game of Life

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Life Lexicon

Signal elbow

A conduit with signal output 90 degrees from its input. This term is commonly used only for signal wires, particularly 2c/3 signals. A Snark could reasonably be called a "glider elbow", but glider reflector is the standard term. A signal elbow with a recovery time less than 20 ticks would enable a trivial proof that Conway's Life is omniperiodic.

A near miss is the following elbow-like converter found by Dean Hickerson. It successfully turns a 2c/3 signal by 90 degrees, but unfortunately changes it to a double-length signal in the process. This means that further copies of the converter can not be appended (e.g., to make a closed loop).

Game of Life pattern ’signal_elbow’

Relatively small composite MWSS elbows can now be constructed, using Tanner Jacobi's 2015 discovery of a small H-to-MWSS component. For example, the Orthogonoid includes a constructor/reflector that reflects an MWSS stream by 180 degrees, but it can be trivially reconfigured to make a 90-degree MWSS elbow.

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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