Centipede
| Centipede | |||||||
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| Pattern type | Spaceship | ||||||
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| Number of cells | 620901 | ||||||
| Bounding box | 11652 × 126714 | ||||||
| Direction | Orthogonal | ||||||
| Period | 240 (mod: 240) | ||||||
| Speed | 31c/240 | 31c/240 | ||||||
| Heat | 402634.1 | ||||||
| Kinetic symmetry | n | ||||||
| Discovered by | Chris Cain | ||||||
| Year of discovery | 2014 | ||||||
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The centipede is a 31c/240 spaceship constructed by Chris Cain later on the same day as the shield bug.[1] It actually reuses most of shield bug's components despite having a quite different shape. Its smaller size is due to a more compact front-end that was built by Cain a day earlier.
It was the smallest 31c/240 spaceship making use of the 31c/240 reaction (and therefore the smallest period-240 31c/240 spaceship) until the development of the silverfish in 2020. It is still the narrowest such spaceship.
The centipede ranked second place in the Pattern of the Year 2014 competition in a belated vote held on the ConwayLife.com forums, behind the waterbear.[2]
Design
Centipede forgoes the track builder of the shield bug, instead building each chain of blocks individually. The central and outer tracks are made by using the same MWSS-based reaction as in the shield bug, while the middle track is made by hitting the MWSS with a glider, making a beehive, and then another glider to turn it into a block. Thus, the centipede needs to construct three pairs of heavyweight spaceships, and three forward rakes at the front to shoot them with. The resulting track is identical to the one in shield bug. The front is followed by three pairs of rake sets from the shield bug, that differ by width of their HWSS columns. A more symmetrical version of shield bug's engineered block fuse makes up the tail of the spaceship. Here, the block-cleaning MWSS is made on both sides, and they cleanly disappear on impact with each other. Because this does not happen if the sides are separated by the usual 20 ticks, some corresponding climbers are separated by 18 ticks instead. In total, centipede has 391 Herschel pairs on the central track, which is actually more than its predecessor has.
See also
References
- ↑ Chris Cain (September 4, 2014). Re: 31c/240 caterpillar working notes (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
- ↑ 77topaz (March 7, 2018). Re: Belated Pattern of the Year 2014 competition: Voting (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
External links
- Centipede at the Life Lexicon
- Patterns
- Spaceships with between 100,000 and 999,999 cells
- Periodic objects with minimum population between 100,000 and 999,999
- Patterns with between 100,000 and 999,999 cells
- Patterns found by Chris Cain
- Patterns found in 2014
- Outer-totalistically endemic patterns
- Spaceships
- Spaceships with period 240
- Orthogonal spaceships
- Spaceships with speed 31c/240
- Spaceships with unsimplified speed 31c/240
- Spaceships with heat between 100,000 and 999,999
- Spaceships with mod 240
- Spaceships with n symmetry
- Pattern of the Year top contenders
- Engineered spaceships
- Macro-spaceships