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)

Trigger

A signal, usually a single glider, that collides with a seed constellation to produce a relatively rare still life or oscillator, or an output spaceship or other signal. The constellation is destroyed or damaged in the process; compare circuit, reflector. Here a pair of trigger gliders strike a dirty seed constellation assembled by Chris Cain in March 2015, to launch a three-engine Cordership:

Game of Life pattern ’trigger’

"Trigger" is also used when a spaceship reacts with another object to cause a reaction to occur whenever desired (but perhaps only at particular intervals). The object being triggered lies dormant until the reaction is required. All turners and freeze-dried constellations are triggerable.

In some cases the object is not destroyed so that the reaction can be repeated after some repeat time. See for example converter and reflector, and more specifically MWSS out of the blue and queen bee shuttle pair.

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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