Syringe

The syringe is a glider-to-Herschel converter discovered by Tanner Jacobi on March 19, 2015[1] composed of an eater 1, a block, a beehive with tail, and a large welded still life[note 1] that combines an eater 2 and an eater 5. It works by converting a bait block into a pi, then hassling the pi into a B-heptomino that restores the bait block over the course of its evolution. Its repeat time is 78, but it can also "overclock" to function with glider streams of period 74 or 75. Jeremy Tan, who coined the term 'syringe' to describe how it injects a glider into a Herschel system, observed that attempting to overclock the intermediate periods of 76 and 77 causes the block to become an LWSS or MWSS; this immediately crashes into the beehive with tail so is of limited utility. The eater 1 can be placed in 3 orientations.

Syringe
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Pattern type Conduit
Conduit type Converter
Input Glider
Output Herschel
Number of cells 66
Bounding box 24×34
Spartan? No
Discovered by Tanner Jacobi
Year of discovery 2015

The syringe allows much more compactness and timing versatility in signal circuitry than Herschel conduits alone, and in combination with the Snark, it can largely replace very long p1 Herschel tracks (if they are not required to be spartan, and the dependent form is spartan) by simply passing a glider from somewhere near the start to somewhere near the destination. This works similarly to Herschel transmitters and receivers, but in more flexible way. Within 3 days of the syringe's discovery, over half of all known guns from periods 14 to 999 were obsoleted by loops involving a syringe and various Snarks.

The syringe was voted on ConwayLife.com as Pattern of the Year 2015.[2]

Dependent form

A variant of the syringe that replaces the welded eater 2 and eater 5 with a separate eater 2 and eater 1 was used in the Demonoid, a self-constructing spaceship. The eater 1 can only be made to fit if the syringe is followed by a dependent conduit. In rare cases where the following conduit does not allow any glider to escape at all (like the dependent beehive-producing H-to-MWSS conduit), only the eater 2 is required.

This 'dependent syringe', unlike the variant with the complex weld, is considered Spartan. It is most useful when attached to an Lx200, as this gives the minimal recovery time of 90.

Removal of block

If the initial transparent block is removed, subsequent gliders entering the syringe will be cleanly consumed by the eater 2. This was utilised by the 0E0P metacell in various places to act as a one-time valve, with the dependent form of the syringe.

gollark: Yes.
gollark: Also, you can "copy text".
gollark: I have a script for that.
gollark: Rudolph.
gollark: It does not.

See also

Notes
  1. Catagolue: xs41_8e1eo0kcwo4oz33034al913kp

References
  1. Tanner Jacobi (March 19, 2015). "Re: Let's find a G-to-X". Retrieved on March 22, 2015.
  2. Alexey Nigin (February 11, 2016). "Re: Pattern of the Year 2015 (Votes)". Retrieved on February 15, 2016.
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