A for awesome wrote: ↑April 9th, 2020, 6:31 pm
A small 4c/8 beehive puffer that I'm not finding prior art for (crossposted from the Discord):
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x = 20, y = 34, rule = B3/S23
17bo$16b3o$2b3o3b3o5bob2o$2bo2bobo2bo6b3o$2bo7bo6b2o$2bo7bo$3bobo4bo3b
o$6bo3bo2b3o$10bo5bo$7bobo$14bo$14b3o$bo12bo$3o3b3o5bo$ob2o2bo2bo$b3o
2bo6b2o$b3o2bo3bo2b2o$b2o3bo3bo2b2o3$7b4obo2bo3$8b2o$7bo2bo$8b2o2$8b2o
$7bo2bo$8b2o2$8b2o$7bo2bo$8b2o!
Though not the smallest overall, it's smaller than the one in jslife-moving/c2-extended/c2-0008-puf.rle that forms the beehive in a similar way (although not quite as resilient), which might reduce some fuse-based constructions.
Sadly that doesn't lay beehives in the right orientation for the wire for a
https://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/Telegraph -- is there a known 5c/10 puffer that does (I guess that would be a "lightspeedtelegraph-wirestretcher", or maybe a "telegraph-wire-layer")? If not, could one perhaps be engineered from suitable-period c/2 rakes and a glider-synthesis for extending lightspeed telegraph wire? Failing that, what would the best way/program to search for one with - is that within current ship search technology, and are there good programs for searching for specific puffers?
It seems to me that long-term, if it was viable, building up a c/2-orthogonal technology comparable to the c/4-diagonal technology used in the speed demonoid might be quite cool, and useful for building very-large structures over large areas. A basic component for that would be c/2 orthogonal wick stretchers.
Trying to reproduce the entire current slow-salvo glider synthesis technology using slow salvos of *WSS sounds hard, since *WSS are larger, but I'm wondering if something mobile comparable to stationary single-glider-seeds, sent in the form of an armada of c/2 orthogonal ships laying down a wick or wire that is used to trigger the mobile seed might be workable. The wick doesn't have to be a light-speed telegraph wire - anything capable of supporting a > c/2 burner or climber might do - but laying down a reuseable lightspeed wire could obviously be useful, once you have enough tech to assemble a receiver attached to it at the far end controlling a universal constructor arm (likely a glider-based one, that could then for example build a gun capable of firing another line-layer + armada).
Another useful component, if possible, would be a way for a spark from a light-speed pulse traveling along a wire or burning a wick to convert a c/2-orth spaceship (likely a *WSS) flying closely parallel to the wire into a forward or backward glider, if possible cleanly or at least in a way that can be cleaned up by following c/2-orth ships -- in the case of a wire without destroying the wire? The fact that a signal moving along a lightspeed telegraph wire shifts it to one side should make this trick usable repeatedly, in which case the wire might be able to support slow-salvo glider synthesis off the sides of it using a mix of lightspeed signals down the wire (initiated by some movable means, likely involving glider synthesis) and parallel c/2-orth ships. This would give us a constructor arm with an indefinite supply of elbows moving at c/2.
Does any of this stuff already exist, or if not, is there anyone working on anything resembling it? Or is this a collection of pipedreams that has been conclusively proven impossible?
An alternative approach would be a c/2 grey-ship trailing a wide pipe of some agar capable of supporting > c/2 signals (likely lightspeed ones) capable of packing enough info into a small enough space to support universal synthesis -- but that sounds more like a recipe for a really large strip of ash.