ConwayLife.com

What are the longest lasting 3 and 4 glider collisions? All the 2-glider collisions are known and it is known that 5 gliders can produce a switch engine that has infinite growth. But what about 3 or 4 gliders? It seems plausible that a switch engine could be made with 4 gliders as well (one that does not die out because of debris interference). If not infinite, what methuselahs have been discovered that can be synthesized with 3 or 4 gliders? I can think of one 4 glider methuselah that can last more than 11,000 generations (a HWSS-glider collision posted here can be synthesized with 4 gliders)

Surely there are some very long lasting methuselahs that can be made from 3 or 4 gliders. To be fair the bounding box needs to be reasonable (100 x 100?) size, because it is possible to make this type of methuselah last arbitrarily long by stretching the distance traveled by the gliders and spacing out collisions. Maybe measuring maximum cell count is better than measuring how long it lasts.

For three glider collisions you could measure the time from when the last glider collides. I believe that three glider collisions haven't all been done yet, so it's entirely possible one of them will make a switch engine.