Conway's Game of Life is a zero-player cellular automaton devised by mathematician John Conway in 1970. The entire universe evolves from an initial seed using just three rules applied simultaneously to every cell.
Rules (B3/S23)
Birth: A dead cell with exactly 3 live neighbours becomes alive.
Survival: A live cell with 2 or 3 live neighbours stays alive.
Death: All other live cells die (loneliness or overcrowding).
The Gosper Glider Gun
Before 1970, theorists wondered whether any finite pattern could produce an unbounded number of live cells. Bill Gosper settled the question on November 23, 1970, when he discovered the Gosper Glider Gun, the first known finite pattern with unbounded growth.
The gun is a 36-cell oscillator with period 30: every 30 generations it fires a glider (a 5-cell "spaceship" that translates diagonally). The continuous stream of gliders means the total live-cell count grows without bound.
Why It Matters
It proved that Life is Turing-complete (guns can build logic gates).
It earned Gosper a $50 prize from Conway for solving the growth conjecture.
Gliders became the "signals" that carry information in Life computers.
This Notebook
Cell 1: live 160 × 120 simulation at 15 FPS. Watch gliders stream rightward.
Cell 2: real-time dashboard with a generation counter, live-cell count, and period annotation.
[1]Glider Gun Simulation
1 panel
Saved output from the author's last run. Press Run to execute live in your browser.
(output too large to embed; run the cell to regenerate it)
[2]Statistics Dashboard
1 panel
Saved output from the author's last run. Press Run to execute live in your browser.