Conway's Game of Life

Conway's Game of Life, a cellular automaton conceived by mathematician John Conway in 1970, unfolds on an infinite, two-dimensional grid. Each cell exists in one of two states: alive or dead. The game progresses through generations, with each cell's fate determined by its eight surrounding neighbors (horizontally, vertically, and diagonally adjacent).

The initial arrangement of cells constitutes the first generation. Subsequent generations arise from the simultaneous application of the following rules to every cell:

• Survival: A living cell remains alive if it has two or three live neighbors.
• Birth: A dead cell becomes alive if it has exactly three live neighbors.

These rules, carefully chosen from numerous variations explored by Conway, strike a delicate balance. Other rule sets often lead to rapid population extinction or uncontrolled expansion. The chosen rules, however, sit near the critical point between these extremes, resulting in the complex and fascinating patterns characteristic of the game. This proximity to instability often yields the most intricate and unpredictable behavior in chaotic systems.