Life as discovered by Conway
Created | Updated Apr 17, 2007
Life as discovered by Conway
Conway's game of life is unknown to most of you Humans (Earthlings sounds strange, one told me). It sometimes shows up as screensaver, or as background animation to hide slow communication links. It was discovered on Earth by John Horton Conway. It is in fact a most peculiar cellular model of unexpected potentials. The base rules are very simple: a cell dies, stays or is created.
The first cells appear from nothing, what their universe is concerned that is. You, the creator of their universe, can create the first generation. That blob of living cells may last forever on their position. Or they start oscillating in the most beautiful symmetric shapes. Or they start shifting in a direction. Or they start growing until a certain size is reached spreading those shifters around. Most random pattens change a lot in the first few generations but render static very soon.
By creating groups of these shifters, they gain in dragging objects around. These objects often behave as anti matter leaving leakage live cells on the path.
Some of the oscillators spread matter in the form of shifting groups of cells. There are oscillators at various frequency's, interfering oscillators can create (semi) random groups of shifting subgoups of cells.
There are endless variations for the rules as long as they have a certain balance.
Basic rules:
Each cell with less then 2 neighboring cells will die, three neighboring cells create a new cell or keep one alive, more then the cell at that position will die. This is known as rule nr 23/3 the game starts up to be fantastic when using nr 42/1.
If you take a close look at population density of any living==reproducing subject you will notice the similarity. Take for instance the sparks above a fire in a fire place, they spray out of nothing feeding on the thin layer of soot, and driven by the warm air from the flames. These sparks walk tumble over its sprouth walking more or las in one direction. The just stay on a spot for a while, grow fast and leave a lot of small groups. Or anything life can do, be it mostly for a shorter instance of time. Animal populations tend to oscillate between large numbers and smaller depending on their food and predators. Some extinct, some stay, some oscillating and some fast growing.
Entry <./>A2247932</.> for examples of tabelised cells.
Conway's game of life is unknown to most of you Humans (Earthlings sounds strange, one told me). It sometimes shows up as screensaver, or as background animation to hide slow communication links. It was discovered on Earth by John Horton Conway. It is in fact a most peculiar cellular model of unexpected potentials. The base rules are very simple: a cell dies, stays or is created.
The first cells appear from nothing, what their universe is concerned that is. You, the creator of their universe, can create the first generation. That blob of living cells may last forever on their position. Or they start oscillating in the most beautiful symmetric shapes. Or they start shifting in a direction. Or they start growing until a certain size is reached spreading those shifters around. Most random pattens change a lot in the first few generations but render static very soon.
By creating groups of these shifters, they gain in dragging objects around. These objects often behave as anti matter leaving leakage live cells on the path.
Some of the oscillators spread matter in the form of shifting groups of cells. There are oscillators at various frequency's, interfering oscillators can create (semi) random groups of shifting subgoups of cells.
There are endless variations for the rules as long as they have a certain balance.
Basic rules:
Each cell with less then 2 neighboring cells will die, three neighboring cells create a new cell or keep one alive, more then the cell at that position will die. This is known as rule nr 23/3 the game starts up to be fantastic when using nr 42/1.
If you take a close look at population density of any living==reproducing subject you will notice the similarity. Take for instance the sparks above a fire in a fire place, they spray out of nothing feeding on the thin layer of soot, and driven by the warm air from the flames. These sparks walk tumble over its sprouth walking more or las in one direction. The just stay on a spot for a while, grow fast and leave a lot of small groups. Or anything life can do, be it mostly for a shorter instance of time. Animal populations tend to oscillate between large numbers and smaller depending on their food and predators. Some extinct, some stay, some oscillating and some fast growing.
Entry <./>A2247932</.> for examples of tabelised cells.
