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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... Latest news  600 pattern milestone — June 19th, 2009 LifeWiki is now home to a grand total of 600 patterns and over 750 articles. Exciting new additions to the wiki include weekly featured articles on the front page (as well as trivia snippets), rules boxes on pattern pages that describe what rules that particular pattern functions under, a much more complete list of the smallest known oscillators of each period, our first few articles about reflectors and recent reflector developments (see the rectifier), and several more pages detailing the accomplishments of specific Life enthusiasts. As always, thanks to all of our contributors!  500 pattern milestone — April 26th, 2009 Over 500 patterns are now catalogued in LifeWiki, and there are over 600 articles total. Some of the most notable recent additions to the database include the addition of glider syntheses in the infoboxes of patterns, greatly expanded information about first-discovered and smallest known spaceships and oscillators of specific speeds and periods, expanded articles about other Life-like cellular automata (such as 2x2, HighLife, and Move), and the first few pages to describe the accomplishments of specific Life enthusiasts (see Noam Elkies for an example). Thanks to all of our contributors! More news...

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.   Did you know... ... that the block-laying switch engine and the glider-producing switch engine (and various combinations of two switch engines) are the only infinitely-growing patterns that are known to have ever occurred naturally from an asymmetric random starting configuration? ... that it wasn't until 2023 that Conway's Game of Life was proven to be omniperiodic? ... that the pentadecathlon and the blinker are the only known oscillators that are polyominoes in more than one phase? ... that it is impossible for any finite oscillator to be a phoenix with any period other than 2? ... that the 16 × 16 soup with the longest known lifespan lasts for over 52,000 generations before stabilizing? ... that replicators with quadratic population growth have been known to exist in Conway's Game of Life since the early 1970s, but none were found until 2018 when Adam P. Goucher constructed the 0E0P metacell? ... that the first known p23 oscillator was not found until 2019, the first known p38 oscillator was not found until 2022, and the first p19 and p41 oscillators were not found until 2023? ... that a pattern whose population grows without bound but does not tend to infinity is known as a sawtooth?             Showing 8 items out of 20 More did you know...