Underpopulation
A live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies.
Interactive Life research lab
Conway's Game of Life, explained through live patterns
Explore still lifes, oscillators, spaceships, methuselahs, and glider guns with a simulator that connects every structure to a concrete observation. Load a pattern, step through the rules, then read what changed and why it matters.
Simulation status
Generations0
Live cells5
Period4
Choose a starting pattern
Load a structure, then press play
Study path
From four local rules to engineered behavior
The Game of Life is simple enough to explain in one minute and deep enough to support a research community. This guide turns the canonical pattern families into a practical sequence: stability, periodic motion, travel, long transients, and signal generation.
Survival
A live cell with two or three live neighbors survives.
Overpopulation
A live cell with more than three live neighbors dies.
Birth
An empty cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes alive.
Pattern taxonomy
Every structure has a role in the larger system
Stable
Still lifes
Stable objects that never change after the first generation. They are the anchors and catalysts used to contain more active reactions.
Browse examplesPeriodic
Oscillators
Patterns that return to their starting phase after a fixed number of generations. They make periods, phases, and symmetry visible.
Browse examplesMoving
Spaceships
Self-contained patterns that reappear translated across the grid. They are the basic signal carriers of Life engineering.
Browse examplesChaotic
Methuselahs
Small seeds with unexpectedly long lifetimes. They are useful for studying growth, stabilization, and emergent debris fields.
Browse examplesEmitter
Guns
Periodic factories that emit spaceships. They connect local reactions to larger signal circuits and computing constructions.
Browse examplesGrowth
Growth patterns
Patterns that keep leaving debris, signals, or repeated output behind. They are a natural bridge from small examples to the advanced infinite board.
Browse examplesFeatured experiments
Load a pattern, then inspect the explanation
These examples cover the core ways people learn Conway's Game of Life: rules, classic patterns, moving spaceships, unpredictable seeds, and the first finite pattern with unbounded growth.
Oscillators
Pulsar
A large period-3 oscillator with strong fourfold symmetry.
Methuselahs
R-pentomino
A five-cell seed that takes over one thousand generations to stabilize.
Guns
Gosper glider gun
The first known finite pattern with unbounded growth.
Guns
Simkin glider gun
A compact true glider gun discovered by Michael Simkin in 2015.
Spaceships
Loafer
A small orthogonal spaceship with an unusually slow c/7 speed.
Learning toolkit
Keep exploring after the first pattern
Life becomes easier to understand when each object is tied to an action. The simulator lets you test a claim immediately, while the notes explain what to watch for in each family of structures.
Dedicated notes
Each entry has a focused page with a preview, behavior summary, observations, and a direct link back to the simulator.
Concept families
Still lifes, oscillators, spaceships, methuselahs, and guns are grouped by how they behave, so learners can move from stable shapes to moving signals and long-running reactions.
Source-backed reading
Articles turn LifeWiki, Golly, and classic cellular automata references into focused explanations that link back to playable patterns.
Beyond Life
Compare Conway Life with other local-rule systems
The next module starts with elementary cellular automata: one row of cells, 256 Wolfram rules, and a live Rule 30 explorer. It keeps the same source-backed approach but shifts the question from named Life patterns to rule comparison.
Rule 30
Run a deterministic one-dimensional rule that looks noisy from a single black cell, then inspect the center-column question.
Open Rule 30Elementary CA guide
Read the eight-neighborhood rule table, the 256-rule count, and why a space-time diagram is not the same object as a Life board.
Read the guideAutomata roadmap
This first stage leaves Langton's ant, HighLife, Brian's Brain, Wireworld, Lenia, and neural CA as later runnable modules.
Open AutomataFurther study
Read the research notes behind the lab
Continue with source-backed articles written for this lab. Each article explains one idea and links back to the pattern you can run.
6 min read
Conway's Game of Life rules: B3/S23 with examples
Learn B3/S23 with a slow blinker demo: births on exactly 3 neighbors, survival on 2 or 3, and simultaneous updates.
Read article6 min readStill lifes are the quiet objects that make Life engineering possible
A block or beehive looks inert, but stable objects become anchors, eaters, and cleanup tools in larger reactions.
Read article6 min readOscillators and periods in Conway's Game of Life
Use blinkers, pulsars, pentadecathlons, and shuttles to understand period, phase, rotor, stator, and bounded motion.
Read article5 min readSpaceships and the glider in Conway's Game of Life
Compare the glider, LWSS, MWSS, and HWSS by period, direction, speed, and what to watch in the simulator.
Read article7 min read3x3 methuselah seeds in Conway's Game of Life
Run the R-pentomino 3x3 methuselah, compare Acorn and Diehard, and check 1,103 generations, 116 final cells, and 6 gliders.
Read article8 min readMethuselah patterns compared: R-pentomino, Acorn, Diehard, Edna
Compare R-pentomino, Acorn, Diehard, and Edna by seed size, lifespan, final state, and the simulator path to run next.
Read article6 min readGosper glider gun: period 30, 36 cells, infinite growth
Run the 36-cell Gosper glider gun, watch its period-30 cycle, and see why one finite Life pattern can emit gliders forever.
Read article7 min readCommon objects in Conway's Game of Life: the patterns you see first
Map common Conway Life objects: stable ash, period-2 and period-3 oscillators, spaceships, methuselahs, guns, and runnable examples.
Read article7 min readSpaceships in Conway's Game of Life: gliders, LWSS, HWSS, and Loafer
Compare gliders, lightweight, middleweight, heavyweight spaceships, and Loafer by direction, period, speed, and simulator use.
Read article6 min readGosper vs Simkin glider guns: period 30 vs period 120
Compare the historical period-30 Gosper gun with the compact period-120 Simkin gun, then run both patterns in the lab.
Read article7 min readPuffers, rakes, and breeders in Conway's Game of Life
Pufferfish, switch engines, rakes, and breeders are the growth patterns that make the infinite board useful.
Read article7 min readLife engineering starts with eaters, Herschels, and reflectors
Eater 1, B-heptomino, Herschel, and Snark-style reflectors explain how Life patterns become controlled signal circuitry.
Read article6 min readWhich Life patterns belong on an infinite board?
Large guns, growth patterns, Turing machines, breeders, and hotels are better served by an isolated Hashlife-powered viewer than by a fixed teaching grid.
Read article