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This week's featured article The lightweight spaceship (or LWSS for short) is the smallest orthogonally moving spaceship, and the second most common spaceship (after the glider). It moves orthogonally at c/2 and has period 4. It was found by John Conway in 1970. Read more... In the news April 30: Christopher D'Agostino posts a modification of a partial Herschel-to-Herschel converter pointed out by AlbertArmstain, producing an easily connectable and completely Spartan L141 conduit with three output gliders including the FNG and SNG. April 19: Nathaniel Johnston completes a "Herschel Tracks Tutorial" YouTube video about creating custom oscillators using Herschel conduits. 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. 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: 1671 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 4.5 MB .zip archive containing the 3500+ RLE pattern files used on the wiki

Did you know... ... that the Fast Forward Force Field reaction can transport an LWSS 11 spaces in 6 generations, creating the illusion of super-light-speed travel? ... that there are line puffers with a row of live cells at the back, which create very dirty exhaust whose period apparently (this is not proven) grows exponentially as the length of the row is increased? ... that there is an infinite series of period 3 oscillators that are polyominoes in one phase, starting with the cross? ... that there are spaceships without any sparks which can nevertheless perturb objects due to their ability to repair some damage to themselves? ... that the R-pentomino creates a queen bee in generation 774, which lasts 17 generations before being destroyed? ... that a relay glider bouncing back and forth between two pentadecathlons was one of the earliest constructive proofs that oscillators can have arbitrarily high periods? ... that there are spacefiller patterns that grow quadratically to fill space with an agar with density 1/2 (zebra stripes)? ... that a row of appropriately placed traffic lights is one of the few known wicks that can be extended by "pushing" from its stationary end? ... that space nonfiller patterns have been constructed that expand to affect the entire Life plane, leaving an expanding region of vacuum at their center? ... that there exist non-monotonic spaceships, even some with period as low as 3, whose leading edges fall back in at least one generation?           Showing 10 items out of 128 More did you know...