Research articles
Read the ideas behind the patterns
These articles turn LifeWiki, Golly, WolframScience, and classic Life references into guided explanations that connect back to playable patterns in the lab.
Life basics
Core rules, notation, and mental models for reading a Life board.
Pattern studies
Blog-style explainers for the structures readers usually learn first.
Still 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 turn Life into a clock
Blinkers, pulsars, and pentadecathlons explain period, phase, rotor, stator, and why bounded motion matters.
Read article5 min readSpaceships are how Life learns to send signals
The glider and the lightweight spaceship show that a finite pattern can move without leaving itself behind.
Read article8 min readMethuselah patterns in Conway's Game of Life, compared
Compare R-pentomino, Acorn, Diehard, Edna, B-heptomino, and Herschel by bounding box, lifespan, final ash, and board-size needs.
Read article7 min read3x3 methuselah in Conway's Game of Life: the R-pentomino
A 3x3 methuselah is best understood through the R-pentomino: five cells, 1,103 generations, 116 final cells, and 6 escaping gliders.
Read article6 min readGosper glider gun in Conway's Game of Life: period 30
Run the period-30 Gosper glider gun, watch the core repeat, and see why one finite pattern proved unbounded growth in Life.
Read article7 min readCommon objects in Conway's Game of Life: the patterns you see first
Blocks, blinkers, tubs, boats, beehives, loaves, and pulsars make a practical first map of Life ash and repeated behavior.
Read article7 min readSpaceships in Conway's Game of Life: gliders, LWSS, and Loafer
The glider, lightweight spaceship, and Loafer explain translation, period, speed notation, and why moving objects became Life signals.
Read article6 min readGosper vs Simkin glider guns: two ways to explain infinite growth
The Gosper glider gun is the historical first gun. The Simkin glider gun gives modern users a compact period-120 comparison.
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 articleTools and formats
How Life communities store, share, and simulate patterns at scale.
RLE is the small text format behind many Life patterns
Run Length Encoded files make patterns portable: dimensions, optional rules, and compact rows of live and dead cells.
Read article6 min readWhat Golly is for, and why a web lab still needs it
Golly is the serious desktop tool for huge cellular-automata experiments; a website should teach the first moves and hand off advanced work cleanly.
Read article5 min readHow to read LifeWiki without getting lost
LifeWiki is a catalogue, not a guided course. The trick is to read pattern pages through behavior, facts, files, and links back to experiments.
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 articleResearch threads