Primer
Primer is a pattern that was constructed by Dean Hickerson on November 1, 1991 that produces a stream of lightweight spaceships representing prime numbers. N is prime if and only if a lightweight spaceship escapes to the left of the pentadecathlon at the bottom-left corner of the pattern at generation 120N+100.[1][2] It was the first pattern created that computes prime numbers, though others have since been constructed using the same ideas (see glider gunless primer).
Primer | |||||||
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Pattern type | Miscellaneous | ||||||
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Number of cells | 2953 | ||||||
Bounding box | 440×294 | ||||||
Discovered by | Dean Hickerson | ||||||
Year of discovery | 1991 | ||||||
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It works by using gliders to emulate a prime number sieve. Lightweight spaceships that move westward are deleted by gliders that represent positive integers if the lightweight spaceship represents a multiple of that number.
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Videos
gollark: There is no incentive to.
gollark: I suspect that many will just copy example code and bodge it slightly.
gollark: *to some extent
gollark: Not the same thing.
gollark: You can filter *addresses*.
References
- PRIMES.LIF from Alan Hensel's lifep.zip pattern collection. Accessed on July 28, 2009.
- four-primers.rle.gz from Golly's built-in pattern catalogue. Accessed on July 28, 2009.
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