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)

Splitter

A signal converter that accepts a single input signal and produces two or more output signals, usually of the same type as the input. An older term for this is fanout, or "fanout device".

A sub-category is the one-time splitter, which is not technically a converter because it can only be used once. One-time splitters are usually small constellations that produce two or more clean gliders when struck by a single glider. In other words, they are multi-glider seeds. These are important for constructing self-destruct circuitry in self-constructing spaceships.

The following combination, a syringe attached to an SE7T14 converter combined with an NW31 converter, is one of the smallest known glider splitters as of July 2018. Another small splitter with a 90-degree colour-changing output is shown under reflector.

Game of Life pattern ’splitter’

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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