Wikipedia:Today's second feature/February 12, 2006
The Game of Life is a cellular automaton devised by John Conway. Ever since its publication in the October 1970 issue of Scientific American, it has attracted much interest because of the surprising ways the patterns can evolve. Life is an example of emergence and self-organization in the way that complex patterns, such as this example of Gosper's glider gun, can emerge from the implementation of very simple rules.
Illustration credit: Kieff