Quadratic replicator

A quadratic replicator is any pattern that fills all or part of the Life plane by making copies of itself in a nonlinear way. Small quadratic replicators are known in other Life-like rules, but until late 2021, no small example has been found in Conway's Life.

In 2018 Adam P. Goucher completed the 0E0P metacell, a very large engineered pattern that is capable of quadratic growth along with many other growth rates, via its ability to emulate arbitrary patterns in any 2-state range-1 Moore neighborhood CA rule, either isotropic or anisotropic (excluding rules that include birth with zero neighbors).

DOGun SaGaQR

On November 29, 2021, Pavgran found a quadratic replicator that is significantly smaller than the 0E0P metacell, although it is still quite large. It can run in Golly with 30 GB of memory. The repeat time is 3×2²³.

External links

• Quadratic replicator at the Life Lexicon