"John Conway's Life" Simulation

Developed by Brian Wilson (Requires Flash)

This simple rules for this example of cellular automata were published by John Conway in the April 1970 edition of Scientific American. Each cell in the grid represents a single-celled life form. A cell is either occupied by an organism, or it is not. Life is born, reproduced, or terminated in a cycle, according to the following rules:

• If an organism has zero or one neighbor, it will die in the next cycle due to loneliness.
• If an organism has two or three neighbors, the organism survives to the next cycle.
• If an organism has four or more neighbors, it will die in the next cycle due to overpopulation.
• If an unoccupied cell has exactly three neighbors, a new organism will be spawned there in the next cycle.

Try it out:

1. Click on "Random" to load a random pattern.
2. Click on "Run" to start the life cycle.
3. If the life reaches a point where it endlessly repeats, you can click on "Stop" to terminate it.
4. Repeat these steps to run again.

Create your own pattern by clicking on cells to toggle them on or off. When you've defined your starting pattern, click on "Run" to view the results.

WolframMathWorld explains how the "Life" simulation works.