The emblem is an example of a cellular automata run according to John Conway's Game of Life. The Game of Life is a set of rules played out on a grid of squares or cells. Cells can be in two states: on or off (alive or dead). The states of the cells in the next time step depend on the current state of the cell as well as the current states of the cells 8 neighbors (East, West, North, South, and the four corners). The rules governing whether a square will turn on, stay on, or turn off are described by: 1. A cell will turn on (comes to life) if it is surrounded by exactly three live neighbors. 2. A cell will turn off (die) if fewer than two neighbors are alive (its lonely). 3. A cell will turn off (die) if more than three neighbors are alive (its overcrowded). The last two rules can be expressed as one rule: A cell will stay on if it is surrounded by exactly two or three live neighbors. As you can see these simple rules can lead to very complex behavior. In this case the set is periodic undergoing 29 steps before repeating. I generated this example using John Conway's rules for the Game of Life in a package I wrote on Mathematica. To make it look fancy, I rendered the squares as cubes (the space of cells is two-dimensional though). I am not sure who discovered this particular oscillator.