Game of Life

0generation

0live cells

Live cells over time. Scroll or use + / − to zoom; drag with Move to pan; click or drag with Draw to add or remove cells, even while it runs.

Run

Speed

Edges

Setups

Load a pattern

RLE is the usual format for Life patterns: b = dead, o = alive, $ = next row, a number repeats what follows.

Why it matters

John Conway invented the game in 1970, looking for the simplest rules that could still surprise him. They do: still lifes, blinkers, gliders that walk, guns that fire them. Then people found that a glider stream can carry bits, crashing streams act as logic gates, and gliders can be stored in loops as memory. In 1982 Conway and others showed that this makes Life Turing complete: with the right starting pattern, it can compute anything any computer can. Paul Rendell built a working Turing machine from it in 2000. And since you cannot know what a computer will do without running it, there is no shortcut to know what a Life pattern will do either: you have to watch.