Game of Life News

One of the very first postings at the LifeNews weblog was for a construction of a Lightbulb with a House [26P2.2595] inductor by Mark Niemiec. He mentioned that it was not known how to construct the minimal case with a Snake [6.1] inductor ([23P2.753]), as shown at left. Noam Elkies has found a series of constructions that fill that gap when combined with construction components found over the years by David Buckingham, Mark Niemiec and H.Koenig.

Note: The sequence shown substitutes a House for the Lightbulb for simplicity, but none of the incoming Gliders will interfere with a range of objects with a 3-bit inductor surface.

Update: 12:45

A further examination of the Contruction Component Catalog shows that there is a way to reduce the conversion of [19.24349] to [21.95471] from 8 Gliders to 6. Unfortunately, this construction will not work for the Lightbulb because the Glider coming in from the Northeast will hit it first, requiring the use of this 8 Glider conversion found by Elkies. A second conversion of only 4 Gliders (47B) won't work even for the House.