Game of Life News

Nicolay Beluchenko created some sample diagonal greyships in various shapes, with a "grey" level of 1/3 ON cells (instead of the usual 1/2 for orthogonal greyships with 'stripes' or 'chicken-wire' agars.) Since these new "ships" are really an independent series of tubstretchers and tubeaters packed together as closely as possible, it's obviously possible to move the pieces farther apart from each other to produce lower fractions of ON to OFF cells.

It may also be possible to construct extensible multi-tubstretcher and multi-tubeater spaceships that support this agar -- where each stretcher or eater is connected directly to the next one, and can't be separated -- but this has not been accomplished as yet. Multistretchers and multieaters with wider spacings have been previously posted, however.

Tubstretcher-based patterns composed of more than 1/3 ON cells are not possible. Thus, to produce a diagonal greyship that maintains a 1/2-ON agar, it would be necessary to devise diagonally moving extensible patterns that stabilize the edges of some other type of agar -- either an oscillating agar, or an extensible series of waves (moving wicks), or perhaps an orthogonally symmetric stable pattern -- most likely the 'stripes' agar.

However, since the stripes are not diagonally symmetrical, each of the edges would need a different type of support. Whether such a construction is possible is currently an open question. The main problem is that diagonal spaceships could not repeat at period 4, because each stripe is two cells away from the previous one -- so p8 spaceships would be needed.

Unfortunately p8 is not really within reach of currently available Life search programs (mainly David Bell's 'lifesrc' and Jason Summers' ' WinLifeSearch' port). Some fairly large leaps in efficiency and/or CPU speed would be needed to make this a likely goal. [Readers are, of course, invited to prove this statement wrong -- or to supply the necessary advances in search technology.]

Posted by Dave Greene at 04:12 | Permalink

Hartmut Holzwart has been continuing his work on greyships with a variety of shapes and speeds.

Continue reading "Greyships -- New Shapes and Speeds"

Posted by Dave Greene at 04:34 | Permalink

Over the past few months, Hartmut Holzwart has constructed a series of spaceships with a variety of shapes, periods, and velocities. The majority have been "greyships" of different types — but here is a random sampling of ships that don't fit neatly into that category:

Continue reading "Extensible spaceships"

Posted by Dave Greene at 14:48 | Permalink

Nicolay Beluchenko has found some new ^c/₄ diagonal spaceships. He also noticed that some previously known spaceships can be reworked and combined to yield a series of extensible ships.

Finally, he also discovered a 150 Bit Period 28 diagonal puffer which creates a Tub and a Beehive every cycle.

Update: 2005-Aug-06

A few more diagonal spaceships found by Nicolay Beluchenko.

Posted by H Koenig at 19:21 | Permalink

David Bell has discovered an unusual catalytic reaction involving a tub-with-tail and a switch engine. Tub-with-tails can be arranged in a double line to produce an extensible diagonal switch-engine conduit.

The reaction is unusual for several reasons:
1) Tub-with-tails don't usually catalyze alone -- a tub-with-tail is more commonly paired with a block or other still life, which makes it capable of 'eating' a glider or similar active pattern.
2) The catalysis used in the bobsled run is a reaction that has not been used in previously known Herschel/B-heptomino/R-pentomino/pi conduits.
3) While Herschels do make an appearance in this conduit, they don't play an important role -- in fact, they must be suppressed in order for the reaction to be repeatable.

One possible open problem would be to construct converters to attach to each end of the 'bobsled run', one taking a Herschel (or glider, spaceship, etc.) as input, and one producing one of these standard signals as an output.

Update:Plain tubs, barges, long barges, etc. can be used in place of tub-with-tails; see "Bobsled Run Update" posting on September 6, 2005.

Posted by Dave Greene at 13:56 | Permalink

Hartmut Holzwart has found a Lightweight Spaceship convoy which consists of a Period 4 wickstretcher head, a Period 19 wick and a Period 4 fuse. Shown is the simplest version with only one copy of the wick and one with two copies of it. (Note that there are no known Period 19 oscillators, so finding stable ends for this wick may take a while, but it could be the foundation for such an oscillator.)

Posted by H Koenig at 22:34 | Permalink

Hartmut Holzwart and Jason Summers have successfully tamed a extended family of wickstretchers, beginning with the one at right -- a p4 wickstretcher with two central lines and a p8 tail, constructed by Holzwart on 22 April 2005.

This was followed by several related results. To the right is an alternate form of the wickstretcher, created by Holzwart, with the right side replaced by a pure p4 tail section. On the far right is another phase of the above wickstretcher, with the tail replaced by a p6 fencepost constructed by Karel Suhajda on the same day.

Starting from a related p80 puffer ship, Jason Summers produced a new smaller p80 puffer -- 8 cells wider than the known p4 ships in Paul Tooke's collection, but about 20 cells shorter. As with the old ships, there's also an alternate, much less prolific p80 orbit -- as well as a p20 "bread-and-honey" orbit (loaves are created, then converted to beehives a few generations later.)

Holzwart also produced a four-central-line wickstretcher, and later a smaller version of the original minimal wickstretcher as well (with no central lines in the wick) -- both completed by a p4 c/2 tail rather than a fencepost.

Based on a "double fencepost" pattern of Holzwart's (not shown) Summers found a way to provide an independent fencepost for each of the two active edges of a wick -- allowing any number of stable lines to be added in the middle (the example at right shows a wick with a 14-line "sandwich".) Other possible modifications include changing the phase of the two edges relative to each other, as in the asymmetrical wickstretcher and fencepost at the far right -- or simply shifting one section of the wick by two cells relative to an adjacent section, as shown by the "spacers" (four-line-thick oblongs) toward the center of the pattern below.

Finally, Summers succeeded in using the new wick and fencepost technology to produce this semi-spacefilling pattern, which expands in three directions at half the speed of light -- producing a triangular region that grows to fill half the plane. [Previous spacefillers have all been diamond-shaped, expanding at c/2 in all four cardinal directions to fill the entire plane.]

Update: 9 May 2005 07:22

On May 6, Hartmut Holzwart produced smaller versions of both the original basic wickstretcher and of Jason Summers' HALFMAX pattern (far right).

Update: 26 May 2005 06:45

On May 21, Jason Summers produced sample patterns that allow the construction of wickstretchers with any number of central lines, by adding the appropriate number of four-line "spacers" to one of the four extensible base patterns. He observed: "For each number of lines, there are eight possible wicks, made by changing the relative position and phase of the two sides of the wick (except for zero lines, where there are only two)."

Wickstretchers with 3, 4, and 5 central lines are shown here. On the far right is Summers' latest HALFMAX optimization, backed up by one generation to reduce the population to 903 cells.

Posted by Dave Greene at 07:22 | Permalink

Background

The Pi Heptomino, shown to the left in an alternate form which occurs in waves and tracks, is a commonly occurring pattern which in 173 generations results in a small constellation of objects. One of the earlier discoveries in the Game of Life was that a Pi Heptomino reappears 30 generations later while having moved 9 cells. This is equivalent to the Pi moving at the speed of ^3c/₁₀. Unfortunately, the exhaust immediately overwhelms the new Pi.

In Lifeline #3 (Sept.1971), p.18, it was reported that Denis Wilson had discovered that when an infinite string of Pis were properly spaced, the entire string moves as a wave at the speed of ^3c/₁₀. It generates a somewhat complicated exhaust which eventually disappears. No way of stabilizing the ends has been found.

In Lifeline #4 (Dec.1971), p.3, it was shown by Mike Beeler how a pair of Blocks allowed the Pi to reproduce several more times before being consumed by its exhaust. With two properly spaced rows of Blocks parallel to the direction of travel, the Pi can move by consuming the rows of Blocks until self-destructing when the rows end.

The rows of Blocks can be laid down by a puffer. Since no known spaceships move at the same speed as a Pi, this results in a spaceship which slowly lengthens. Here the Period 18 puffer moves at ^c/₂, in effect every 180 generations adding 4 Block pairs to the track that will be consumed by the Pi.

A single Pi can also move along a single trail of Blinkers. This Pi in the "Pi Crawler" takes 45 generations to reappear, having moved 17 cells in the process, resulting in a speed of ^17c/₄₅. As above, a puffer of another velocity can be used to lay down a track for the Pi to travel along. More importantly, a Blinker is left behind, allowing multiple Pi Crawlers to use the same trail of Blinkers. This reappearance, along with spaceships which lay down the Blinker trails, is the basis for Gabriel Nivasch's Caterpillar. See his article for more details.

Recent News

In a discussion of waves in general, Jason Summers mentioned a Pi Wave which, while not well known, was discovered a while ago, and which lays down trails of Twin Blocks. As with the clean Pi Wave, there's no known way to stabilize the ends.

He also presented some new Pi Waves in which adjacent Pis are not in exact phase with each other as with the earlier Pi Waves.

Also, Nicolay Beluchenko presented some new Pi Tracks in which a first Pi climbs the track as with the earlier Blinker trail, above. But in the process, the Pi alters the track, leaving behind a different track. A second Pi can follow on this track, cleanly burning it.

Beluchenko also discovered a track in which a pair of streams of Heavyweight Spaceships (HWSSs) can be used to support a Pi's movements.

Posted by H Koenig at 13:25 | Permalink