The Game of Life is a cellular automaton that models a population of living organisms living on a two-dimensional plane subdivided into squares. One cell may live in each square. John Horton Conway set down the rules of the game in Scientific American:

1. If a cell has less than two neighbors alive in any of the eight adjacent squares (those immediately above and below, left and right, and those that touch corners diagonally), it dies.
2. But if it has more than three live neighbors, it also dies.
3. Having two or three neighbors, a cell lives on to the next generation.
4. If an empty square has exactly three neighbors, a new cell is born there.

The rules are repeatedly applied, and one of two kinds of outcomes are possible: the entire population could die out, or the population settles into a periodic pattern that can go on infinitely.