Wave
A wave is a repeating pattern that moves similarly to a spaceship, although it is infinite. It may be seen as a wick with additional displacement in a direction not parallel to itself.
Waves can be terminated with other components, yielding infinitely extensible spaceships and growing objects. A finite wave of this kind is a wick-like structure attached at both ends to moving spaceship-like patterns, in such a way that the entire pattern is mobile. If the wave gets longer over time, the supporting patterns are wavestretchers.
Also, the gliders or spaceships emitted by a rake may be referred to as a wave, again because the line as a whole appears to move in a different direction from the individual components, due to the rake's movement. Compare with stream.
In general a wave can be interpreted as moving at a variety of different velocities, depending on which specific subcomponents are chosen as the starting and ending points for calculating speed and direction. See antstretcher and wavestretcher for a practical example of identical wave ends being connected to spaceships with different velocities.
Certain waves such as knightwave and switchwave, as well as 3c/7 wave, have known stabilisations; however, some, like 3c/10 pi wave and 3c/14 pi wave are not.
As there is no size constraint for a wave, unlike for a spaceship, very simple c orthogonal waves can be shown to exist.
See also
External links
- Wave at the Life Lexicon
- Wave completion thread (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
- Level wave speed limit? (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
- amling wave searches braindump (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums