Queen bee shuttle pair
A queen bee shuttle pair is any arrangement of two queen bee shuttles such that the two beehives created between them are consumed in some way. There are many ways that the two shuttles can be placed, either head-to-head, or else at right angles. The most well-known and useful arrangement results in the Gosper glider gun.
Other arrangements don't create any lasting output, but create large sparks which can perturb objects (especially gliders) in various ways. For example, one arrangement of a queen bee shuttle pair was used in the original unit Life cell as a memory cell. Here an input glider is converted into a block, which remains until it is deleted by a glider on a right-angled path.
| (click above to open LifeViewer) RLE: here Plaintext: here |
See p690 gun and metamorphosis II for two more examples.