arrays the game starts with an initial configuration supplied by the user successive generations are created by applying the set of rules simultaneously to each cell in the grid interesting patterns can develop as the population of organisms undergoes changes by expanding or eventually dying out to illustrate the game of lifeconsider the following simple configuration of live organismsapplying the rules to this configuration creates the next generation this results in two organisms dying (shown below as the light gray boxesbased on rule one remaining alive based on rule and the generation of new organism based on rule (the black box marked with an xx if we evolve the next generationthe system dies out since both live cells in the first generation have single live neighbor while some systems may eventually die outothers can evolve into "stablestate consider the following initial configuration and its first generation the result is stable state since the four live cells each have three neighbors and no dead cell has exactly three neighbors in order to produce new live cell another interesting patterns is the "two-phase oscillator,which alternates between successive generationsinitial configuration st generation nd generation