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)

Wavestretcher

A spaceship pattern that supports a connection to an extensible periodic wick-like structure, whose speed and/or direction of propagation are different from those of the wavestretcher spaceship.

Connecting the following to a standard diagonal antstretcher creates a new oblique wavestretcher (a type of growing spaceship) and also an alternate space nonfiller mechanism.

Game of Life pattern ’wavestretcher’

A required supporting c/5 spark is shown at the right edge. It can be supplied by a spider or another c/5 orthogonal spaceship with a similar edge spark. Alternatively, the c/5 component could theoretically be replaced by a supporting spaceship travelling diagonally at c/6, to support the same oblique trail of ants. As of June 2018 no workable c/6 component has been found.

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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