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Welcome to LifeWiki, the wiki for Conway's Game of Life. Currently contains 2,576 articles.

Guns Methuselahs Oscillators

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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... 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 1.75 MB .zip archive containing the 1500+ RLE pattern files used on the wiki

Did you know... ... that in Life, no spaceship can exist with a speed of (m, n)c/x where (m + n)/x > 0.5? ... that even without using fixed-cost reverse caber tosser technology, an N-bit strict still life – specifically, some length of long long (...) boat or ship – can be constructed for any odd integer N using no more than 20 gliders, and for any even integer N using no more than 21 gliders, using a temporary tubstretcher? ... that the caterpillar contains over 11 million cells, the 0E0P metacell contains over 18 million cells and the unnamed (34,7)c/156 spaceship contains over 25 million cells? ... that the Gosper glider gun was the first pattern to be discovered that exhibits infinite growth? ... 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?           Showing 10 items out of 84 More did you know...