Gosper glider gun

The Gosper glider gun is the first known gun, and indeed the first known finite pattern with unbounded growth, found by Bill Gosper in November 1970.[1] It consists of two queen bee shuttles stabilized by two blocks. Its 36 cells remained the smallest size of any known gun until the discovery of the double-barreled Simkin glider gun in 2015 which overtook this record with only 29 cells.

Gosper glider gun
<html><div class="rle"><div class="codebox"><div style="display:none;"><code></html>24bo11b$22bobo11b$12b2o6b2o12b2o$11bo3bo4b2o12b2o$2o8bo5bo3b2o14b$2o8b o3bob2o4bobo11b$10bo5bo7bo11b$11bo3bo20b$12b2o! #C [[ THUMBSIZE 2 THEME 6 GRID GRIDMAJOR 0 SUPPRESS THUMBLAUNCH ]] #C [[ AUTOSTART ]] <nowiki>#C [[ THUMBSIZE 2 GPS 15 ]]</nowiki> <html></code></div></div><canvas width="200" height="300" style="margin-left:1px;"><noscript></html> <html></noscript></canvas></div></html>
View animated image
View static image
Pattern type Gun
Number of cells 36
Bounding box 36×9
Period 30
Barrels 1
Discovered by Bill Gosper
Year of discovery 1970

As the Gosper glider gun can be constructed with only 8 gliders, it has the smallest known glider synthesis of any gun. It can be destroyed completely by 2 gliders, as shown below.

Trivia
  • There are two other ways in which queen bees can interact to form gliders,[2] and a third queen bee can be used to reflect a glider and make a "pseudo-Gosper gun".[3]
Glider destruction of the Gosper glider gun
RLE: here
An inline inverter inverting a glider stream
RLE: here
Twogun, the smallest known period-60 gun, is composed of two Gosper glider guns.
RLE: here
gollark: __END OF SENTENCE
gollark: __END OF SENTENCE
gollark: __END OF SENTENCE you.
gollark: __END OF SENTENCE
gollark: __END OF SENTENCE

See also

References
  1. Dean Hickerson's oscillator stamp collection. Retrieved on March 14, 2020.
  2. Mark Niemiec (September 11, 2013). Re: It´s not a Gosper Glider Gun ! (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
  3. Tropylium (September 26, 2013). Re: It´s not a Gosper Glider Gun ! (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
This article is issued from Conwaylife. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.