ConwayLife.com

I should add that in the "long term" we can also consider whether the density of certain patterns which we know will always exist (see above) tends to 0 (or indeed to any other value). But not enough is known about Sparse Life, or an infinite random field with any density other than 0 and 1, to ...

andrewthelifer: Probviously true, but intractable: in the long run (and at large range), an arbitrarily sparse but non-zero-density Life universe will have no moving objects as all spaceships and puffers will collide into something eventually.

This is false, if I understand you correctly. If we ...

I think Nick Gotts went through all of this by hand already, but there is probably a more uniform description of what you would have to enumerate.


This is what I need to check - watch for the "Systematic survey of small patterns" thread to be added to! Certainly, I don't have any doubt 10 cells ...

Hi,

As I wrote to Dave in response to his email, I'm just getting back into Game of Life after an almost complete break (I'm getting back into it by working on a smaller survey of a similar type, which I'll post about soon.

The main aim of my exhaustive (but unfinished) survey was to establish the ...

I see you (dani) added a comment to the "Systematic Survey of Small Patterns" on Nov.30th 2018. I discovered after my last posting on that thread that I might have overlooked some multi-cluster patterns with fewer than 10 cells, started work on redoing that part of the search, then got a job (which ...

Interesting! There must be some there I wasn't aware of - I haven't kept up with simsim's postings - but there are also some you don't have. The six below only differ trivially, but they are all composed of a single cluster, which none of your 27 do, and I think one was the first 10-cell infinite ...

Many congratulations on this work, dani! When simsim beat the 26-cell record I'd established with Wedge-grow, I made some attempts at beating the 23 mark established by switch-engine ping-pong, but with no progress.

Could you post your 27 10-cell switch engines?

It's a nice pattern, but I doubt whether it produces unlimited novelty. If it goes on producing novelty long enough, it will (almost certainly) eventually produce sub-patterns like the original puffer-train, which travels at c/2 and leaves a permanent tail. If this happens in the right (wrong ...

Just a couple of comments.
1) IRL, living things are not "resistant to attack" in the sense used in the first comment on this thread - they do resist attack, but none exist that can repel all possible attacks. And they don't reproduce in empty space; rather they require the presence of highly ...

Conway's Life has also turned out to be a fairly effective Sorting Hat, so to speak, that can divide up Lifenthusiasts into "mathematician" and "engineer" categories. - dvgrn

I think I belong to a third category (possibly the only active member!): "naturalists". I'm mostly interested in what ...

Thanks calcyman, that's very helpful!

I'm an ignoramus when it comes to hardware. I'm planning to buy a new desktop machine (or more likely, hire my son to build one for me), as the one he built a decade ago is showing its age. Golly is probably the most demanding software I run on a regular basis - either single, highly complex ...

The UK Guardian has reprinted online an article on Conway from 2015: https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... -the-world, outlining some of his other contributions as well as GoL.

Condolences to his family and friends.

I nominate the patterns found by Nick Gotts in his Systematic survey of small patterns , including Bunnies 10a which broke a long-standing record for population 10 methuselahs.


Thanks! I'm surprised (but of course, honoured) for this to be nominated, but I note:
1) That the systematic search of ...

So it does - thanks.

The c/2 puffer growing from this:
x = 3, y = 7, rule = B37/S23
b2o$2o$bo2$bo$2o$b2o!


or even this:
x = 3, y = 9, rule = B37/S23
bo$bo$2o2$2bo2$2o$bo$bo!


emerged out of a large soup. I'd be surprised if it hasn't been reported before, but it doesn't appear in this thread. As with a lot of B37 ...

muzik wrote:
Would exponential growth be possible with a linearly expanding neighbourhood?

The most straightforward way to get exponential growth would be to work on a regular tiling of a hyperbolic surface (where the angles of a triangle sum to less than 180 degrees). For example, such a surface ...

This is more of a comment than a request, but I would personally be interested to see the results of running each starting 9 and 10 cell pattern for exactly 12 generations to check for oscillators and spaceships of periods that are a factor of 12.

Thanks for your interest. I'd have to do ...

The survey of single-cluster 10-cell patterns is complete, after 8 months. The total number of patterns generated and tested is 90465963 - right in line with my original estimate of just over 90 million. The only infinite growth patterns found are the one found by Paul Callahan in 1997, and the 5 ...

The search of single-cluster 10-cell patterns is nearly done - I've generated and tested 85,844,356 patterns, and estimate the total is around 91,000,000. The search has turned up two more patterns that lead into a figure 8 to add to the one I noted in an earlier comment. I found another 5. but on ...

Another slight improvement (in terms of life-span) to bunnies10. Let's call this one bunnies10b: lasts 17431.
x = 9, y = 6, rule = B3/S23
o$bo$2bo$3bo$2b2obo$6b3o!

Bounding box 9*6, MCPS 11.

Here's an alternative form - the two have the same immediate successor:
x = 9, y = 6, rule = B3/S23
o ...

Another slight improvement (in terms of number of life-span) to bunnies10. Let's call this one bunnies10b: lasts 17431.
x = 9, y = 6, rule = B3/S23
o$bo$2bo$3bo$2b2obo$6b3o!

Bounding box 9*6, MCPS 11.

Here's an alternative form - the two have the same immediate successor:
x = 9, y = 6, rule ...

However, it's definitely true that infinite-growth patterns haven't traditionally been included in the "methuselah" category. Otherwise there are all kinds of difficult cases that would have to be considered, especially from Nick Gotts' old "Patterns with Eventful Histories" blog , from back in ...

Cross-posted from "Systematic Survey of Small Patterns".

Here are two more variants of bunnies10a (10-cell single-cluster patterns that last 17425 steps). The one on the left has a bounding box 7*5, and an MCPS of 11, which according to the usual criteria for methuselahs makes it the preferred ...

Here are two more variants of bunnies10a (10-cell single-cluster patterns that last 17425 steps). The one on the left has a bounding box 7*5, and an MCPS of 11, which according to the usual criteria for methuselahs makes it the preferred variant.

x = 27, y = 5, rule = B3/S23
bo19bo$3o17b2obo ...