Gun
A gun is a stationary pattern that repeatedly emits spaceships (or rakes) forever. By far the most common type of guns are glider guns, which emit gliders (the most well-known of which is the Gosper glider gun); however, guns that emit spaceships of other speeds, including c/2 orthogonal, 2c/5 orthogonal, and c/12 diagonal, have also been created.
History
The first gun to be discovered, the Gosper glider gun, was found by Bill Gosper in 1970, being the first known pattern in Conway's Game of Life to exhibit infinite growth. Since then, many guns have been constructed with various periods and that fire spaceships of various speeds. Due to simple glider syntheses of the standard spaceships many c/2 spaceship guns are known. The first gun that did not fire gliders or c/2 spaceships was a Cordergun (a gun that fires Corderships) constructed by Jason Summers in July, 1999[1] based on a synthesis of a variation of the 7-engine Cordership by Stephen Silver. In March, 2003 Noam Elkies completed the synthesis of 60P5H2V0 which Dave Greene used to construct the first 2c/5 spaceship gun in April of the same year.
In July, 2010 Dave Greene constructed a few guns for a geminoid spaceship.[2] These are the first guns that shoot obliquely-traveling spaceships and at the time were the largest patterns constructed in Life, in terms of their bounding boxes.
On February 17, 2013 Josh Ball discovered a simple c/7 orthogonal spaceship, loafer. Adam P. Goucher found a synthesis for loafer later that day, allowing the construction of c/7 orthogonal spaceship guns.[3]
During March 2016 the copperhead spaceship was discovered, with a glider synthesis and several guns following suit.[4]
In 2019 and 2020 guns were produced for the spaceships 46P4H1V0,[5] spider,[6] and 58P5H1V1,[7] of speeds c/4 orthogonal, c/5 orthogonal, and c/5 diagonal respectively.
Barrels
The barrel of a gun (or rake) is a path along which spaceships travel. The term is most commonly used in the context of the number of barrels a gun or rake possesses, which is the number of distinct spaceship streams emitted by said gun or rake. For example, the AK-94, B-52 bomber and Simkin glider gun are said to be double-barrelled because they produce two streams of gliders. The period-256 glider gun and Gunstar and its variants all have four barrels, and P94S contains a whopping 12 barrels. Given a gun with multiple barrels, one can eliminate barrels by simply placing an eater 1 in the path of the unwanted glider streams.
Pseudo-period guns
A pseudo-period gun (as opposed to a true-periodgun) is a gun that emits a period n stream of spaceships (or rakes) via a mechanism that oscillates with a period different from n -- this period will necessarily be a multiple of n. Pseudo period n glider guns are known to exist for all periods greater than or equal to 14, with smaller periods being impossible. The first pseudo period 14 gun was built by Dietrich Leithner in 1995.
True-period guns
A true-period gun (as opposed to a pseudo-period gun) is a gun that emits a period n stream of spaceships (or rakes) via a mechanism that oscillates with period equal to n. True period n guns are known to exist for all periods greater than 53[8], but only a few smaller periods have been achieved, namely 20, 22, 24, 30, 33, 36, 40, 44, 45, 46, 48, 50, 52. Credits for gun periods below 62 are as follows:
| Period | Discoverer | Year of discovery |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | Matthias Merzenich and Noam Elkies | 2013 |
| 22 | David Eppstein and Jason Summers | 2000 |
| 24 | Noam Elkies | 1997 |
| 30 | Bill Gosper | 1970 |
| 33 | Arie Paap and Matthias Merzenich | 2018 |
| 36 | Jason Summers | 2004 |
| 40 | Adam P. Goucher, Jason Summers, and Matthias Merzenich | 2013 |
| 44 | David Buckingham | 1992 |
| 45 | Matthias Merzenich | 2010 |
| 46 | Bill Gosper | 1971 |
| 48 | Noam Elkies | 1997 |
| 50 | Dean Hickerson and Noam Elkies | 1996 |
| 52 | Dave Greene, Chris Cain, Matthias Merzenich and Adam P. Goucher | 2018 |
| 54 | Dietrich Leithner | 1998 |
| 55 | Stephen Silver | 1998 |
| 56 | Dietrich Leithner | 1998 |
| 57 | Matthias Merzenich | 2016 |
| 58 | thunk and Matthias Merzenich | 2016 |
| 59 | Adam P. Goucher and Jason Summers | 2009 |
| 60 | Bill Gosper | 1970 |
| 61 | Luka Okanishi | 2016 |
Guns in Life-like cellular automata
Due to the existence of some small spaceships in Life-like cellular automata with birth at two live neighbours (B2), many low-period spaceship guns have been found using tools such as WinLifeSearch. In contrast, there are very few outer-totalistic rules without B2 (and B0) that are known to contain guns. The following is a list of outer-totalistic rules with neither B0 nor B2 that have known guns:
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See also
- Dieter and Peter's glider gun collection
- Glider gun true-periods status table
- Gun pseudo-periods status table
- List of guns
- Quetzal
References
- "Game of Life Status page". Retrieved on October 15, 2010.
- Adam P. Goucher (July 30, 2010). "Gemini guns". Retrieved on October 15, 2010.
- Shannon Omick (February 18, 2013). Re: c/7 orthogonal spaceships (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
- Alexey Nigin (March 6, 2016). Re: is this c/10 spaceship known? (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
- Goldtiger997 (October 22, 2019). Re: Stable signal converters (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
- Entity Valkyrie (January 26, 2020). Re: Small Spaceship Syntheses (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
- Entity Valkyrie (May 22, 2020). Re: Construction practice (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
- Dave Buckingham (October 12, 1996). "My Experience with B-heptominos in Oscillators". Retrieved on May 14, 2009.
- Matthias Merzenich (Sokwe) (April 11, 2013). "Guns in Life-like cellular automata".
External links
- Gun at Wikipedia
- Gun at the Life Lexicon
- Double-barrelled at the Life Lexicon
- Execution of Old Guns by Variable-Speed Firing Squad (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums