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Welcome to LifeWiki,
the wiki for Conway's Game of Life.
Currently contains 2,140 articles.
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This week's featured article

Transqueenbeeshuttle.png
The queen bee shuttle can refer to one of two period-30 oscillators (trans- version shown to the right) in which a queen bee travels back and forth between two blocks. Other stabilisations exist, such as ones that involve the eater 1, called the buckaroo. The queen bee shuttle is the basis of all known true period 30 guns (including the infamous Gosper glider gun). It was found by Bill Gosper in 1970 and was the first period 30 oscillator to be found. It is the smallest known oscillator with period greater than 15 and about the 18th most common naturally-occurring oscillator.

In the news

Pattern collection

The LifeWiki contains one of the most comprehensive catalogues of patterns available on the internet. Within it you will find:
Download.gif 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 with reverse caber-tosser universal constructor technology, it is possible to build any possible glider-constructible pattern, no matter what size, using only 16 gliders?
  • ... that there are at least four known ways to send information diagonally at a speed greater than the maximum spaceship speed through vacuum? (Complete mechanisms include speeds approaching c/2 via two perpendicular telegraphs, and 2c/3 via a 2c/3 wire.)
  • ... that an oscillator with strict volatility 1 can be constructed for any period 3506905 or higher?
  • ... that the original Gemini's "below-the-elbow" construction efficiency, roughly three gliders per still life, is about four times better than that of any subsequent self-constructing spaceship?
  • ... that an O(sqrt(log(t))) pattern was constructed in 2010, with a diameter that grows at the slowest possible asymptotic ("big O") rate for any Life pattern?
  • ... that since the first Cordership was assembled from 13 switch engines in 1991, the number of switch engines required has gradually decreased, with a 2-engine Cordership finally making its appearance in 2017?
  • ... that the bounding box and recovery time of the current fastest stable reflector, Mike Playle's Snark, are both more than two full orders of magnitude smaller than the first stable reflector, constructed by Paul Callahan in 1996?
  • ... that as of 2022, no finite elementary replicators have been found in Life?
  • ... that while multiple c/12 diagonal spaceships are known, none are true period?
  • ... that the first p23 oscillator, David Hilbert, was created as a modification of a "troll" pattern posted a week earlier?          
Showing 10 items out of 160 More did you know...