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This week's featured article The kickback reaction is a collision of two gliders resulting in a single glider travelling in the opposite direction to one of the original gliders. This is important in the proof of the existence of a universal constructor, Bill Gosper's total aperiodic, and many other constructions. Besides the 90-degree collision shown here, one other two-glider collision with gliders meeting at 180 degrees also produces a clean output glider, and may also be called a "kickback reaction". Read more... In the news September 4: 400spartans constructs a 278-cell unconstructible still life, smaller in population and bounding box than the previous minimum 306-cell version. August 31: Keith Amling constructs the first c/3 against-the-grain greyship based on an idea by Hartmut Holzwart. August 28: Carson Cheng, Mitchell Riley, and iNoMed collaborate to find the smallest known p140 oscillator. August 27: Mitchell Riley, iNoMed, and Matthias Merzenich collaborate to find the smallest known p126 oscillator. Nico Brown and iNoMed then use this oscillator to construct a new record smallest p126 gun. August 26: Keith Amling discovers the first 2c/5 orthogonal greystretcher. Editable news item submissions page • Archive • @conwaylife on Twitter Pattern collection The LifeWiki contains one of the most comprehensive catalogues of patterns available on the internet. Within it you will find: 1654 patterns (including 680 oscillators, 172 spaceships and 389 still lifes); 3761 images (609 animated and 3152 static); Over 3000 downloadable pattern files; Glider syntheses for 950 patterns. Download pattern collection 6MB .zip archive containing the 5200+ Game of Life RLE pattern files used on the wiki Also available: 38KB .zip archive containing approximately 75 pattern files for other cellular automata

Did you know... ... that it is possible for a single Life object to simulate the evolution of an arbitrary number of other Life objects at the same time (although at increasingly slower speeds)? ... 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?           Showing 10 items out of 161 More did you know...