Salo–Törmä question on the Game of Life limit set
Let be the global map of Conway's Game of Life, and let be its limit set. Is the translation action of on topologically transitive? Equivalently, for every pair of finite patterns and that each occur in some configuration of , does there exist a configuration and a translation vector such that contains and also contains translated by ?
Equivalent formulations 1Other wordings
Other statements of this same problem, merged from separate entries. Each is equivalent to the statement above — proving any one settles them all.
Finite-pattern co-occurrence formulation
For any two finite patterns that each occur in the Game of Life limit set, there should exist a single limit-set configuration in which both patterns occur, at some relative position.
References
Primary source
Additional references
- The Ultimate Fate of Life Is Not Shared — arXiv — Ziyue Gan, Ziran Li, Jiadong Zhu
Progress summary
A new paper claims that two kinds of repeating behavior can never coexist in any long-term Game of Life pattern, which would settle the question negatively.
The Salo–Törmä question asks whether the Game of Life limit set is topologically transitive.
Claimed non-transitivity result
Ziyue Gan, Ziran Li, and Jiadong Zhu report that two locally recurrent patterns are globally incompatible in every limit-set configuration, proving that the Game of Life limit set is not topologically transitive. The claim appears in The Ultimate Fate of Life Is Not Shared and remains unverified.
Current status (as of September 2026): a negative resolution is claimed in a preprint, but the result has not been independently verified; no other confirmed resolution was found.
Solutions 0
No solutions have been posted yet.