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

Beyond the Reach of God. Thought experiments involving the God-universe and the Nature-universe, the Turing-complete Game of Life, and a lot of insightful back-and-forth in the comment section, to boot. One of the most interesting and thought-provoking essays I've read on the Internet in a very long time, by Eliezer Yudkowsky on his blog, Overcoming Bias (via).
posted by WCityMike on Oct 9, 2008 - 64 comments

Mushroom Life
posted by loquacious on Feb 10, 2005 - 16 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

"They are, it is true, almost laughably simple by comparison with real people and real societies, but that is exactly the point. If even the crudest toy societies take on a life and a logic of their own, then it must be a safe bet that real societies, too, have their own biographies." Things have certainly gotten more interesting in the years since John Conway invented the game of life.
posted by tdismukes on Apr 2, 2002 - 20 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