This Is Life

Horton Conway's Life is a 'cellular automaton', a mathematical model that dictates the creation and destruction of cells in a binary grid over iterations. The rules of Life are as follows:

• Stasis: If an alive cell has two or three alive neighbours, then it will stay alive in the next iteration.
• Birth: If a dead cell has three alive neighbours, it will be born in the next iteration.
• Death: If any cell has four or more alive neighbours, it will be overpopulate and die next iteration. If any cell has only one alive neighbour, it will die next iteration.

Life was created by Conway in 1970 (without machine computation!) to demonstrate how a few simple rules and random initial conditions can lead to self-sustaining and organizing structures. Wait around for the cells to find a stable solution, or reload the page to try new random initial conditions. Certain structures are well understood and have even been studied, which I will discuss further when I update this page. Access the javascript from my github. (Today: Jun 30, 2026)