This Life lexicon is compiled by Stephen A. Silver from various sources
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The exhaust is dirty and unfortunately catches up and destroys the switch engine before it runs 13 full periods. Corderman found several ways to stabilize the switch engine to produce puffers, using either one or two switch engines in tandem. See stabilized switch engine and ark.
No spaceships were able to be made from switch engines until Dean Hickerson found the first one in April 1991 (see Cordership). Switch engine technology is now well-advanced, producing many c/12 diagonal spaceships, puffers, and rakes of many periods.
Small polyominoes exist whose evolution results in a switch engine. See nonomino switch engine predecessor.
Several three-glider collisions produce dirty reactions that produce a stabilized switch engine along with other ash, making infinite growth. Until recently the only known syntheses for clean unstabilized switch engines used four or more gliders. There are several such recipes. In the reaction shown below no glider arrives from the direction that the switch engine will travel to, making it easier to repeat the reaction: Running the above for 20 ticks completes a kickback reaction with the top two gliders, resulting in the three-glider switch engine recipe discovered by Luka Okanishi on 12 March 2017.
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.
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.
Each cell with three neighbors becomes populated.
Video’s about the Game of Life
Interesting articles about John Conway
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