Seed

A seed is a constellation that when triggered (normally hit by a glider) evolves into a target object, possibly with some extra junk.

Seed constellations are commonly used in self-constructing circuitry. For example, to create a faraway target object to start construction of a new copy of a construction arm at a safe distance, it is often useful to use a seed for a complex spaceship or wickstretcher -- something that can be stopped when it reaches its destination by following it with a faster spaceship or wick burning reaction.

One-glider seeds, or "1G seeds", are particularly useful in slow salvo construction because the constellation can be built up incrementally, with changes made one glider at a time. When it is complete it can be triggered by the final glider in the recipe. Triggering a seed will usually create several precisely synchronized gliders that then co-operate to construct the target object, similar to a standard glider synthesis.

Seed is also sometimes used in a more general way, to mean any initial configuration -- i.e., a predecessor of the target state of the pattern.

Common one-glider seeds

Many common active regions have common objects that are one-glider seeds. Here is a list:

• Traffic light (can be triggered from a blinker, beehive, loaf, long boat, or toad);
• Honey farm (can be triggered from a block, beehive, loaf, boat, or toad);
• Pi-sequence (can be triggered from a block, blinker, beehive, boat, ship, pond, toad, beacon, or fishhook);
• R-sequence (can be triggered from a beehive, loaf, or toad);
• B-sequence (can be triggered from a boat, toad, or beacon);
• Century sequence (can be triggered from a boat, toad, or beacon);
• Wing sequence (can be triggered from a boat, ship, or beacon);
• Blockade (can be triggered from a beehive);
• Queen bee (can be triggered from a ship);
• E-sequence (can be triggered from a boat);
• Blonk-tie sequence (can be triggered from a blinker or fishhook)
• Phi spark (can be triggered from a blinker or a boat)

x = 44, y = 8, rule = B3/S23 obo7bobo7bobo7bobo7bobo$b2o8b2o8b2o8b2o8b2o$bo9bo9bo9bo9bo2$b2o8b2o8b2o8b2o8b2o$b2o7bo2bo6bobo7bobo7bo2bo$11b2o8bo8b2o8bo2bo$41b2o! #C [[ THUMBSIZE 2 THEME 6 GRID GRIDMAJOR 0 SUPPRESS THUMBLAUNCH ]] #C [[ AUTOSTART GPS 5 LOOP 17 T 0 PAUSE 0.6 T 4 PAUSE 0.4 T 6 PAUSE 0.7 T 12 PAUSE 0.2 ]]

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The reason that so many objects are one-glider seeds for a pi-sequence is because when a glider hits a line of two cells in a still life in a certain way, the way that the glider reacts almost always produces a pentaplet grandparent of the pi-heptomino after four generations, as well as some cells behind it. For a block, beehive, boat (in one orientation), ship (in one orientation), and pond, the excess cells turn out to be sparks, so a clean pi-sequence is produced. The only common one-glider seed for a pi-sequence that does not produce the pi-this way is a blinker, which does not actually produce a pi-heptomino but instead produces a twelve-cell cluster with the same great-grandchild (hence the term pi-sequence rather than pi-heptomino).

Splitter-based

Many spaceships and some other difficult-to-construct objects have activation stages that require many gliders coming at once from multiple directions. For uses in self-constructing circuitry, simply firing all of the gliders at once in a synchronized manner is impractical. For this reason, for the activation stage, the activation stage uses a series of turners and splitters that create all of the necessary synchronized gliders from only one initial glider that requires no synchronization.

See also

• Slow salvo
• Glider synthesis
• List of one-glider seeds

External links

• Seed at the Life Lexicon