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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... In the news April 8: David Bell constructs and refines a puffer demonstrating that all sufficiently high c/4 diagonal rake periods are achievable. Matthias Merzenich uses this to construct a clean p3532+4N rake. March 31: Entity Valkyrie builds a complete 2c/3-wire-based pseudo-Heisenburp device with 742-tick repeat time. March 27-30: Entity Valkyrie completes a 2c/3 receiver with a repeat time of 876 ticks, which Adam P. Goucher eventually improves to 742 ticks using staged recovery mechanisms; the previous record-setting receivers needed 964 or 970 ticks to recover. March 20: Period1GliderGun discovers a period-26 bouncer-based reflector, the first independent reflector of this period, using components by Nico Brown and Dean Hickerson. March 19: Keith Amling constructs new p6 c/2 orthogonal greystretchers in which the stripes are bounded by extended tables. March 18: Nathaniel Johnston posts a YouTube video about the discovery of the true period-15 glider gun and period-16 glider gun, and the history leading up to those discoveries. March 17: James Pascua discovers the first period-16 90-degree independent reflector based on a suggestion by Matthias Merzenich, using the period-16 glider gun to hassle a honey farm predecessor and produce a banana spark. 90-degree reflectors are known for all periods except 14, 17, and 19 with periods 15, 23, and 26 having only dependent reflectors. March 16-17: Keith Amling completes a new c/4 diagonal unstable puffer engine (only the third known puffer engine at this speed) based on a partial result by Matthias Merzenich. Caleb R. Hilton uses sparkers to stabilise the unstable engine into explicit puffers. David Bell uses this engine to construct the first p52 c/4 diagonal rake, and "b3s23love" and Merzenich use it to substantially reduce the size of the p108 c/4 diagonal rake. Editable news item submissions page • Archive • 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 2 MB .zip archive containing the 1500+ RLE pattern files used on the wiki

Did you know... ... that despite being the fourth smallest non-flotilla orthogonal spaceship, loafer did not appear from a single randomly generated soup until 2020? ... that all known glider eaters take at least four ticks to recover to their original state after eating a glider? ... that among Life-like (outer-totalistic) rules, Conway's Life's "near neighbours" B35/S23, B36/S23, and B38/S23 are not explosive, but B37/S23 is? ... that there is roughly one chance in 10^(N/3) that a still life appearing out of random soup will have a population of exactly N cells? ... that the number of still lifes with N+1 bits is roughly 2.48 times larger than the number of N-bit still lifes? ... that the odds of a randomly-chosen 20 × 20 soup pattern being a methuselah that lasts between N and N + 1000 ticks, are roughly the same as the odds that it will last any amount of time longer than N + 1000 ticks? ... that all still lifes up to 17 cells can be synthesized at a cost of less than one glider per cell? ... that the first elementary knightship, Sir Robin, was discovered only in 2018, with there having been a very close call in 2004? ... that there is a 5 × 2 counterexample to the Coolout Conjecture, proving that patterns that are internally compatible with stability can not always be made part of a larger still life, no matter what cells are added around the edges? ... that a Conway's Life pattern representing a complete programmable 8-bit computer, consisting only of buckaroos, p60 glider guns, and glider duplicators, was completed in November 2016?           Showing 10 items out of 102 More did you know...