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Welcome to LifeWiki, the wiki for Conway's Game of Life. Currently contains 2,574 articles.

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This week's featured article A spaceship (much less commonly referred to as a glider or a fish) is a finite pattern that returns to its initial state after a number of generations (known as its period) but in a different location. The speed of a spaceship is the number of cells that the pattern moves during its period. This is expressed in terms of c (the metaphorical "speed of light") which is one cell per generation; thus, a spaceship with a period of five that moves two cells to the left during its period travels at the speed of 2c/5. Most known spaceships in Life travel either orthogonally (only horizontal or vertical displacement) or diagonally (equal horizontal and vertical displacement). However, several large Conway's Life spaceships have been engineered that travel in various oblique directions, and it is known that Life has spaceships that travel in all rational directions at arbitrarily slow speeds. Read more... Pattern collection The LifeWiki contains one of the most comprehensive catalogues of patterns available on the internet. Within it you will find: 1670 patterns (including 691 oscillators, 176 spaceships and 381 still lifes); 3758 images (608 animated and 3150 static); Over 3000 downloadable pattern files; Glider syntheses for 958 patterns. Download pattern collection 1.75 MB .zip archive containing the 1500+ RLE pattern files used on the wiki

Did you know... ... that there are 71 distinct ways for two gliders to collide, but it is unknown how many distinct 3-glider collisions there are? ... that to display the smallest known gun pattern for a Gemini spaceship at 1 cell = 1 pixel, on a standard-density video monitor, a screen over one mile square would be needed? ... that no odd-period glider guns were known before 1995, when a period 565 p5-spark-assisted B-heptomino loop was constructed by David Buckingham? ... that even though the speed limit for spaceships is c/2 in a vacuum, in a medium of stripes agar there are "spaceships" that can travel at lightspeed along the stripes, or two thirds of lightspeed perpendicular to the stripes? ... that the smallest known spacefiller pattern consists of 107 cells? ... that the smallest known sawtooth pattern in Conway's Life consists of only 177 cells? ... that there are now over two hundred known Herschel conduits, counting stable conduits only, and a much larger number if oscillator-supported conduits are included? ... that the period-21 glider gun discovered in 2021 was the seventh smallest gun in bounding box when found, and is still the odd true period glider gun with the lowest known period? ... that a pattern exists in which no cell in the unbounded Life plane ever becomes periodic? ... that several different universal constructors in Conway’s Life have been shown to be capable of constructing their own circuitry?           Showing 10 items out of 81 More did you know...