A Computer In The Game Of Life

A Computer In The Game Of Life

We often hear the term “Turing-complete” without giving much thought as to what the implications might be. Technically Microsoft PowerPoint, Portal 2, and Magic: the Gathering all are Turing-complete, what of it? Yet, each time someone embarks on an incredible quest of perseverance and creates a computer in one of these mediums, we stand back in awe.


[Nicolas Loizeau] is one such individual who has created a computer in Conway’s Game of Life. Unlike electricity, the Game of Life uses gliders as signals. Because two orthogonal gliders can cancel each other out or form a glider eater if they intersect with a good phase shift, the basic logic gates can be formed from these interactions. This means the space between gates is crucial as signals need to be in phase alignment. The basic building blocks are a period-60 gun, a 90-degree glider reflector, a glider duplicator, and a glider eater.


All the Python code that generates these structures is on GitHub as the sheer size of the machine couldn’t possibly be placed by hand. The Python includes scripts to assemble the basic programs as a bank of selectable glider generators. It’s all based on Golly, which is an excellent program for simulating Conway’s Game of Life, among other things. While this isn’t the first computer in the Game of Life as [Paul Rendell] published a design in 2000 and [Adam Goucher] published a Spartan universal computer constructor in 2009, we think this is a particularly beautiful one. ..

Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.