The heavyweight spaceship (commonly abbreviated to HWSS) or (rarely) big fish is the fourth most common spaceship after the glider, lightweight spaceship and middleweight spaceship. It was found by John Conway in 1970 and travels at a speed of c/2 orthogonally. Its domino spark can be used to stabilize several tagalongs, including sidecar and half of x66. It is one of only three known spaceships that is a polyomino in any of its phases.
The side and tail sparks allow an HWSS to make changes to other objects without being affected itself -- a "Heisenburp" effect. For example, gliders approaching from behind can be deleted in five different ways, or can be converted into a block, B-heptomino, or beehive, as shown below.
Commonness
The HWSS is the thirty-fifth most common object on Adam P. Goucher's Catagolue.[1]
It is the fourth most common natural spaceship that is not a flotilla, being less common than the middleweight spaceship but about 171,000,000 times more common than the Coe ship.
Image gallery
 Three Heavyweight spaceship eaters
|
 Example collisions between HWSS and forward-traveling glider Download RLE: click here |
References
See also
External links
Template:LinkWeisstein
