Conway's Game of Life   In 1970 the English mathematician John Conway defined the rules for 'the game of life', not so much a real game but an implementation of the mathematical concept of cellular automata. Cellular automata are objects that follow a (simple) set of rules to evolve from one generation to the next. This application of the same rules over and over is a property that cellular automata share with fractals, although Conway's game of life does not produce a fractal image. The game of life consists of a field of cells that can be in one of two states: populated or not populated. Starting from an initial condition where some cells of the field are populated and some are not, the following set of three rules is applied repeatedly. Birth Death by loneliness Death by overpopulation If an unpopulated cell is surrounded by three populated cells, it becomes populated. If a populated cell is surrounded by at most one other populated cell, it becomes unpopulated. If a populated cell is surrounded by at least four other populated cells, it becomes unpopulated. Click on the Start button and see how these rules make a randomly generated population evolve. You can click the Stop button to stop the evolution, and when the evolution is stopped the Seed button will create a new initial random population. A larger version of the game is also available. It is definitely more fun to watch, but only so if you have a reasonably fast computer.

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