Many different types of patterns occur in the Game of Life, some are discovered even today. Patterns are split into different categories including still lifes, oscillators, and patterns that translate themselves across the board ("spaceships").
Below you can see a few examples from each category.
Still life patterns are stable life forms that don't present any movement from generation to generation;
Block
Behive
Loaf
Tub
Boat
Carrier
An oscillator is a pattern that is a predecessor of itself. This means that it is a pattern that repeats itself after a fixed number of generations (known as its period).
These patterns never cease to exist, they live indefinitely like the still life forms
Blinker
Figure eight
Octagon 2
Pentadecathlon
Spark coil
Wheel
A spaceship is a pattern that repeats itself like the oscillator, but in the same time they present movement on the board, never appearing in the same place, moving from one part of the matrix to another The most common and simple of all is the glider
Lightweight Spaceship
Mediumweight Spaceship
Heavyweight Spaceship
Glider
Loafer
Moon
A gun is a stationary pattern generates spaceships indefinitely. One can say that they are life generators.
The first gun ever discovered is the Gospel Glider Gun discovered by Bill Gospel in 1970 earning 50$ from Conway disproving Conway's theory that finite patterns can't lead to limitless numbers of cells
Gospel's glider gun
Gospel glider gun shooting gliders video
A methuselah is a pattern that takes a large number of generations in order to stabilize (known as its lifespan) and becomes much larger than its initial configuration at some point during its evolution. Some methuselahs stabilize into still life and oscilators others die out completely
Acorn
B-Heptomino
Diehard
Glider by the dozen
Piheptomino
Thunderbird
A wick is a static or oscillating linearly repeating pattern that can be made to burn at one end.
Ants
Blinker Fuse
If you want to play an online simulation click play and try your own patterns and discover life forms Play