Why can Conway’s Game of Life be classified as a universal machine?

Question

I was recently reading about artificial life and came across the statement, \"Conway’s Game of Life demonstrates enough complexity to be classified as a universal machine.\"

Answer 1

I highly recommend the book The Recursive Universe by Poundstone. Out of print, but you can probably find a copy, perhaps in a good library. It's almost all about the power of Conway's Life, and the things that can exist in a universe with that set of natural laws, including self-reproducing entities and IIRC, Darwinian evolution.