The Free Will Theorem - "If there exist experimenters with (some) free will, then elementary particles also have (some) free will." (previously)
posted by kliuless on Jun 28, 2009 - 229 comments

Researchers discover gigantic "Caterpillar" spaceship that travels at (17/45)c. Just another exciting development in the Game of Life (previously).
posted by fatllama on Jan 20, 2009 - 51 comments

Bricks, tiles, and other textures.
posted by Wolfdog on Feb 7, 2007 - 15 comments

Phutball (Rules, Java Applet), aka Philosophers' Football or ConwayGo is a deceptively simple 2-player game you can play on a Go board, or any rectangular grid. (It may be simple, but finding the right move is [PDF] NP Complete.)
posted by Wolfdog on Aug 2, 2005 - 7 comments

President Bush pledged in 2003 that "A free Iraq will not be a training ground for terrorists... A free Iraq will not destabilize the Middle East." This past January, the CIA's National Intelligence Council observed that Iraq had become "a training ground, a recruitment ground" for jihadists. Now the senior Marine commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. James Conway -- in a statement that has not yet been picked up by the media -- acknowledges that the war is furnishing a new "a training ground" for foreign fighters trained in urban warfare who will export terror all over the world, saying, "But there's not much we can do about it at this point in time."
posted by digaman on Jul 2, 2005 - 19 comments

The Geometry Center at the University of Minnesota, while now closed, maintains an awesome website with tons of math resources. I like sphere eversion, i.e. turning a sphere inside out. Link is to script of video, which explains things pretty well. Here is a clip [QT]. Also good: notes from a class on geometry and the imagination that John Conway and some friends gave awhile back. Old but good.
posted by mai on Mar 1, 2005 - 3 comments

Beyond Life [Java]. Mirek's Cellebration is an beautiful applet for exploring all sorts of cellular automata. Source code and standalone version also available.
posted by Wolfdog on Jan 4, 2005 - 7 comments

You may have heard of Conway's Game of Life, where pixels "live" or "die" based on a few simple rules about how many neighbors they have. But did you know that in the 30 years since the game was created, Life enthusiasts have (created? discovered?) an extensive catalog of (objects? creatures?) which interact to form some amazing, nifty, grinning, sometimes beautiful, rube-goldberg, occasionally even a little scary patterns often starting from the simplest of building blocks? (Including a Turing machine!) Or that a lone pixel can exert remarkable control over its environment? Now you can see in a few seconds in a java applet, on your desktop, or even on a PalmOS handheld the outcome of simple patterns that, when first discovered, no computer could handle. A mind blowing example of the power of emergent properties.
posted by straight on May 29, 2002 - 22 comments

Eric's Treasure Trove of Life. The cellular automaton known as 'Conway's Game of Life', that is. Many things to see, from the Table to the B-Heptomino, and even an AK47 Reaction. There's a huge community out there devoted to discovering new 'still lifes', 'puffers' and 'induction coils'. Who would have guessed Life could be so interesting?
posted by chrismear on Feb 7, 2002 - 5 comments