One-cell-thick pattern: Difference between revisions
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==Other examples== | ==Other examples== | ||
Revision as of 23:41, 20 August 2010
A one cell thick pattern is a pattern that is only one cell thick; that is, it is contained entirely within one dimension of the Life plane. Put another way, it is a pattern with bounding box of the form y×1 for some natural number y. Because of their size restriction, exhaustive computer searches have been carried out to explore unidimensional patterns up to size about 40×1. Despite their inherent limitations, unidimensional patterns can exhibit quite complex behavior, even at reasonably small sizes.
Naively, one would assume that searching all y×1 patterns would require O(2y) time. However, all such patterns containing one-cell and two-cell islands can be discarded, which reduces the search time to O(phiy). Callahan employed this optimisation in his search for unidimensional infinite-growth patterns.
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Other examples
Some other interesting examples of one cell thick patterns include the following predecessor of a tumbler, which was found during Paul Callahan's computer search in October 1998. It has 27 live cells and fits in a 36×1 bounding box.[1]

Download RLE: click here
The following pattern, also due to Callahan, has 66 live cells and fits in a 149×1 bounding box, yet dies out completely after 233 generations. Additionally, it is interesting because each half produces two gliders and two lightweight spaceships.

Download RLE: click here
The smallest one cell thick pattern to emit a glider contains 12 live cells and fits in a 15×1 bounding box.[2] It runs for 3183 generations before stabilizing and has a final population of 1059 cells.

RLE: here
Spaceships and oscillators
It is unknown whether or not there exists a spaceship that is one cell thick in one of its phases, though it can be shown via symmetry arguments that any such spaceship, if they exist, would have to move in the direction that it "points". The blinker is the only known oscillator that is one cell thick in one or more of its phases, and in April 1992, Allan Wechsler used a search program to show that there are no oscillators of period 3, 5 or 7 that are one cell thick. The situation is unknown for other periods.[3]
A plausible strategy for building such unidimensional oscillators/spaceships is to create a synthesisable unidimensional pattern that is a predecessor to a universal constructor. Creating a unidimensional constructor predecessor is the easy part; synthesising it is much more difficult, as all sparks must disappear before it enters its unidimensional phase.
A weaker problem is to find a unidimensional pattern that is the predecessor of another non-trivial unidimensional pattern. Non-trivial means that it must contain at least one line of length 4; otherwise it would consist of blinkers and disappearing sparks. For example, this rules out the pattern ooooo.ooo, which becomes a single blinker.
References
- ↑ Jason Summers' jslife pattern collection.
- ↑ "Unidimensional Patterns (2)". Infinite Growth Weblog (April 2, 2009). Retrieved on May 27, 2009.
- ↑ E-mail sent from Allan Wechsler to LifeList