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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 4.5 MB .zip archive containing the 3500+ RLE pattern files used on the wiki

Did you know... ... 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? ... that there are over 35.4 billion distinct strict still lifes with 34 or fewer cells? ... that some infinitely-growing patterns can be constructed with as few as three gliders? ... that quadratically-growing patterns have been found with as few as 20 initial cells? ... that the blinker is the only known finite oscillator that is one cell thick?           Showing 10 items out of 128 More did you know...