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 many 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 that 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 the 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
- Main article: Barrel
The barrel of a gun (or rake) is a path along which spaceships travel. For example, a double-barrelled glider gun is a gun that emits two glider streams.
Pseudo-period guns
A pseudo-period gun (as opposed to a true-period gun) 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 possible periods except for 14, 17, 18, 19, 23, 26, 29, 31, 35, 38, 39, and 47. Credits for gun periods below 62 are as follows:
| Period | Discoverer | Year of discovery |
|---|---|---|
| 15 | Period1GliderGun and Carson Cheng | 2024 |
| 16 | Period1GliderGun and Nico Brown | 2024 |
| 20 | Matthias Merzenich and Noam Elkies | 2013 |
| 21 | Tanner Jacobi and David Raucci | 2021 |
| 22 | David Eppstein and Jason Summers | 2000 |
| 24 | Noam Elkies | 1997 |
| 25 | Mitchell Riley | 2022 |
| 27 | David Raucci and goldenratio | 2022 |
| 28 | Matthias Merzenich and Paul Callahan | 2020 |
| 30 | Bill Gosper | 1970 |
| 32 | Matthias Merzenich, David Raucci, praosylen, wwei23, and Noam Elkies | 2021 |
| 33 | Arie Paap and Matthias Merzenich | 2018 |
| 34 | Nico Brown | 2022 |
| 36 | Jason Summers | 2004 |
| 37 | iNoMed, goldenratio, and Luke Kiernan | 2022 |
| 40 | Adam P. Goucher, Jason Summers, and Matthias Merzenich | 2013 |
| 41 | iNoMed, Matthias Merzenich, May13, David Raucci, and Nico Brown | 2023 |
| 42 | Tanner Jacobi and David Raucci | 2021 |
| 43 | Nico Brown | 2022 |
| 44 | David Buckingham | 1992 |
| 45 | Matthias Merzenich | 2010 |
| 46 | Bill Gosper | 1971 |
| 48 | Noam Elkies | 1997 |
| 49 | Tanner Jacobi, wwei23, and hotcrystal0 | 2021 |
| 50 | Dean Hickerson and Noam Elkies | 1996 |
| 51 | Luka Okanishi, wwei23, and hotcrystal0 | 2021 |
| 52 | Dave Greene, Chris Cain, Matthias Merzenich and Adam P. Goucher | 2018 |
| 53 | iNoMed and goldenratio | 2024 |
| 54 | Dietrich Leithner | 1998 |
| 55 | Stephen Silver | 1998 |
| 56 | Dietrich Leithner | 1998 |
| 57 | Matthias Merzenich | 2016 |
| 58 | Maia Karpovich, Matthias Merzenich, and Chris Cain | 2016 |
| 59 | Adam P. Goucher and Jason Summers | 2009 |
| 60 | Bill Gosper | 1970 |
| 61 | Luka Okanishi | 2016 |
Smallest guns by area of bounding box
A collection of smallest guns by bounding box area was originally created and maintained by Dietrich Leithner and Peter Rott, before Jason Summers took over the maintenance. The p14-999 collection had subsequently evolved into a Git repository led by Chris Cain. Currently, the collection is maintained collaboratively at Catagolue's glider-synthesis database.
- Current database (Catagolue)
- older repository maintained by Chris Cain (only p14-1024)
- older version maintained by Jason Summers (includes some periods in the range p1000-9999).
Note that this classification of smallest is of dubious utility: see Pointless optimisation game for more details.
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
- Guns (category)
- Dieter and Peter's glider gun collection
- Glider gun true-periods status table
- Gun pseudo-periods status table
- Quetzal
References
- ↑ "Game of Life Status page". Retrieved on October 15, 2010.
- ↑ Gemini guns at Game of Life News. Posted by Adam P. Goucher on July 30, 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
- ↑ Matthias Merzenich (April 11, 2013). Guns in Life-like cellular automata (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
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