Revision as of 20:58, 8 July 2023 by DroneBetter(talk | contribs)(Add notes section, and new note therein regarding the use of Rich's p16 for LWSS's and MWSS's (maybe one day different spaceships can have their own sections))
A filter is an oscillator used to delete some but not all of the spaceships in a stream. For example, a blocker can delete every second glider in a stream of period8n + 4, and can also do the same for LWSS streams. Other examples are the middleweight emulator, T-nosed p4 (either of which can be used to delete every second LWSS in a stream of period 4n + 2) and the fountain (which does the same for MWSS streams).
Filters can be used to make guns of high periods. For instance, the period-20 glider gun can be made p40 with a blocker, then p80 with Rich's p16, and even p160 with 68P32.1:
↑As used in the smallest period-90 glider gun (note that it is shown in the p45 pi-heptomino hassler page, which also functions as a period-tripler, but is not a filter because it depends on a temporary block to destroy the second of every pair of gliders between those let through, which (if not destroyed) can otherwise destroy the hassler itself)