The evil mad scientists at Evil Mad Scientist have put together the ultimate Game of Life - in hardware.

Its a table with modules and LEDs switched by a microcontroller. When its switched on it computes updates using the rules of life and as a result you can see the cells die and come to life and watch as the patterns develope.New configurations can be input by touching the table.

See the video to get an idea of how much fun it is!

If you would like to try your hand at a software interactive Life then see the end of this article.

If you would like to know more of how it was all made then visit the Evil Mad Scientist site:

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/gameoflife

And all I can say in closing is that if this is the sort of thing they do they aren't really living up to the "evil" part of their name!

If you would like to try it out for yourself then see: SilverLife - Life in Silverlight and for an article on how to make your own Life app see Life in Silverlight 4

Relevant links

For a look at the rules of life:The Meaning of Life

To try it out: SilverLife - Life in Silverlight

If you would like to find out how to implement Life in Silverlight then try: Life in Silverlight 4

For a WPF desktop version see: Life in WPF

News of a new life form:It's life but not ...

For the bigger picture: The Universe as a Computer