Conduit

A conduit is an arrangement of still lifes and/or oscillators that move an active object to another location without themselves being permanently damaged. The object may be transformed into a different active object in the process, but no permanent debris may be left behind (except perhaps gliders or other spaceships). Probably the most important conduit is conduit 1, in which a B-heptomino is transformed into a Herschel in 59 generations.

Herschel conduits

The most prolific stable conduits are those which rotate, reflect or translate a Herschel in a number of generations. All oscillators of periods => 58 can be built using these sixteen elementary conduits. All except the smallest stable reflectors use Herschel conduits, the counter-examples being the rectifier and boojum reflector.

Herschel conduits can be chained in order to form a Herschel track. Karel Suhajda's search program Hersrch automates the process of building a track.

The elementary conduits are codenamed according to the final orientation of the output Herschel relative to the input Herschel, and the number of generations it takes for the output Herschel to reach the same phase as the input Herschel. For example, the R64 conduit performs a right turn in 64 generations.

The sixteen elementary Herschel conduits are:

• R64
• Fx77
• L112
• F116
• F117
• Fx119
• Bx125
• Fx153
• L156
• Fx158
• F166
• F171
• Fx176
• Lx200
• Rx202
• Bx222

Many of these use the block+snake combination (conduit 1) in order to clean up the output B-heptomino to produce an output Herschel. Dave Greene, with the invention of his boojum reflector, discovered a way to remove this block using the first natural glider of the Herschel. However, these conduits are not considered 'elementary', since they contain a boojum reflector.

External links

Conduit at the Life Lexicon