Conways Game Of Life Glider
One interacts with the game of life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves.
Conways game of life glider. The glider was found by richard k. A single gosper s glider gun creating gliders in conway s game of life. It is often wrongly stated that john conway discovered the glider but conway himself has said that it was guy a fact expounded in conway s biography genius at play. The discovery of the glider gun eventually led to the proof that conway s game of life could function as a turing machine.
The game of life also known simply as life is a cellular automaton devised by the british mathematician john horton conway in 1970. History the first gun to be discovered the gosper glider gun was found by bill gosper in 1970 being the first known pattern in conway s game of life to exhibit infinite growth. The glider is a pattern that travels across the board in conway s game of life. It was first discovered by richard k.
Conways game of life rules. Guy in 1969 while conway s group was attempting to track the evolution of the r pentomino. His initial experiments in that field were done with pen and paper long before personal computers existed. For many years this glider gun was the smallest one known in life although other rules had smaller guns.
It is turing complete and can simulate a universal constructor or any other turing machine. It is a zero player game meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state requiring no further input. Conway was especially known for the invention of the game of life one of the early examples of a cellular automaton. Guy in 1970 while john conway s group was attempting to track the evolution of the r pentomino.
However in 2015 a period 120 gun with fewer live cells but a larger bounding box was discovered. The universe of the game of life is an infinite two dimensional orthogonal grid of square cells each of which is in one of two possible states live or dead or populated and unpopulated respectively. Since then many guns have been constructed with various periods and that fire spaceships of various speeds. The gosper glider gun is the first known gun and indeed the first known finite pattern with unbounded growth found by bill gosper in november 1970.
Every cell interacts with its eight neighbours which are the cells that are horizontally vertically or.