What does "stabilize" mean in Conway's game of life?

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In wikipedia's article about Conway's game of Life, it often talks about a pattern eventually stabilizing, there's even a page about a type of seed called Methuselah which is "defined" as a small pattern of initial live cells that takes long to stabilize. However a definition of what it means to stabilize cannot be found. A possible definition would be that a pattern stabilizes if at some point it enters a cycle. But an example given in that page would not fit, since there are gliders that will prevent cycles from happening. How can "stabilize" then be defined?

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We say a pattern has stabilized when it becomes obvious that the population has stopped growing. For example, we say the R-pentomino stabilizes at step 1103 because at this point it consists of just gliders and oscillators, and it is clear that the gliders will never collide with each other or with any oscillators