Game of Life News

Here is a sample Herschel-based oscillator with a 12-digit-prime period, along very similar lines as the 11-digit-prime oscillators constructed in 2003, but with alternative 'glider advancer' technology and more compact connecting circuitry.

Like the 2003 examples, this pattern consists of a Herschel/glider loop (period 1536 this time, instead of period 1450) attached to a series of thirteen 'quadrupler' conduits of two different types, L-shaped and straight. Each quadrupler allows only one Herschel signal in four to get through to the next conduit.

In the starting configuration, the first three quadruplers are set to absorb three signals each: an extra block has been added to the first two L112 quadruplers and the first Fx70 quadrupler, which has a standard F166 dependent conduit appended to suppress the following Herschel's first glider. So the circuit initially counts down from 63. When all circuits are empty, a signal gets through to activate the 263-step glider advancer -- after which the circuit counts down again, this time from 4^13-1.

As usual with this kind of Herschel-track construction, Karel Suhajda's 'Hersrch' search program was used to design the base loop, and to locate an efficient connecting circuit between the end of the quadrupler chain and the glider advancer. The continuing challenge, of course, is to fit an oscillator with a higher prime period into a bounding box with a smaller number of cells.