still life

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See also: still-life

English

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a still life

Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Calque of Dutch stilleven.

Noun

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still life (plural still lifes or still lives)

  1. (painting) A work of art depicting an arrangement of inanimate objects.
  2. (cellular automata, usually countable) A pattern that does not change from one generation to the next.
    Hyponyms: beehive, block, boat, loaf, ship
    • 1992 May 5, Holocaust-->Travesty, “the Hodge Podge machine”, in comp.theory.cell-automata[1] (Usenet):
      I think you're talking about a configuration known as "eater," a still life in 6-8 cells. If the glider hits the right spot, the eater will form a bridge and destroy the glider while undergoing little change before reverting.
    • 1996 November 16, Paul Callahan, “Still-life glider reflector found”, in comp.theory.cell-automata[2] (Usenet):
      Thus, a natural question, apparently proposed very early, was whether there exists a still life (i.e. period 1 oscillator) that reflects a glider.
    • 2003 December 12, Tony Finch, “Implementing Conway's Life”, in comp.theory.cell-automata[3] (Usenet):
      I haven't tested yet, but I expect hlife to win by a very large margin since the puffer train has lots of still life and blinkers to make Gosper's algorithm look good, and hlife's low-level implementation is quite good at handling the more random parts.

Synonyms

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Translations

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