Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

For discussion of specific patterns or specific families of patterns, both newly-discovered and well-known.
JohnD
Posts: 1
Joined: June 20th, 2010, 4:21 am

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by JohnD » June 20th, 2010, 4:26 am

Hello,
First time here, led to you by the New Scientist article.
Used to play with Life many years ago. Nothing serious or original, but fascinating.

Is there a video of the Gemini anywhere?
The one on the NS website is unwatchable, out of focus, blotchy and uninfomative.
Please consider posting a video in YouTube?

John

User avatar
calcyman
Moderator
Posts: 2932
Joined: June 1st, 2009, 4:32 pm

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by calcyman » June 20th, 2010, 9:56 am

Here's an updated version of the script, optimised to run faster.
Attachments
synthesise-pattern2.zip
Optimised version of the glider synthesis script
(5.44 KiB) Downloaded 1903 times
What do you do with ill crystallographers? Take them to the mono-clinic!

Awesomeness
Posts: 126
Joined: April 5th, 2009, 7:30 am

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by Awesomeness » July 6th, 2010, 4:33 pm

In our community, May 18th shall now be a holiday. OMG! I always wanted to see a knightship! OMG! This is amazing!

User avatar
dvgrn
Moderator
Posts: 10610
Joined: May 17th, 2009, 11:00 pm
Location: Madison, WI
Contact:

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by dvgrn » July 24th, 2010, 1:38 am

calcyman wrote:Producing a Gemini gun is more difficult, but not totally intractable. A practical method of synthesis would be to generate the 'shell' of a Gemini, and then synthesise an active Gemini in front of it. That way, the active Gemini would delete the shell, and not the gun. Anyway, it's much easier than Dave Greene's ambition to create a Caterpillar gun!
Just for the record -- I've never exactly had any real plans to build a Caterpillar gun. When the Caterpillar first came out, a gun was inevitably mentioned; I looked at the problem just long enough to determine that a) it was technically possible, b) it would take a huge time investment to solve all the tricky synchronization problems in the construction recipe, c) testing the recipe would be a horrible chore with a pattern that size, and d) I wasn't going to think about it any more.

Now, a Gemini gun is different! The darn things almost build themselves:

http://www.cranemtn.com/life/files/gemi ... 820116.zip
http://www.cranemtn.com/life/files/gemi ... 076540.zip
http://www.cranemtn.com/life/files/gemi ... 712268.zip

There's some more information in the pattern comments about other possible gun periods and so forth. I'll post some more of the technical details here if anyone is interested.

On my system, which has 2 gigabytes of RAM of which Golly is set to use 1.5 gigs, the first construction cycle runs well at speeds of up to 8^6 up to about 17 million ticks. But once the glider recipe doubles back tightly on itself and greatly increases the number of tiles that hashlife has to store, the optimum speed goes down to 8^4 or 8^5. It may be best to set the base step in Golly to 2 rather than 8, to get finer control between 2^12 and 2^18 or so.

For anyone who doesn't want to take the time to run one of these guns through a full cycle, I've saved a version of the p74820116 gun after three complete spaceship construction cycles, and a copy of the p202712268 gun after one cycle:

http://cranemtn.com/life/files/gemini-g ... 460348.zip
http://cranemtn.com/life/files/gemini-g ... 1cycle.zip

In the p74820116 gun, the constructed spaceships are out of synch with each other, so several different stages of the replicator-unit construction cycle are visible at one end or the other of the lineup.

By contrast, the p202712268 version is a "laser" gun, with all of the output Geminoids in the same phase. This means that after several construction cycles, the pattern will use far fewer hashlife tiles than the lower-period guns. If someone is running Golly on a fast computer with a ridiculous amount of RAM, I'd be particularly curious to know if the p202712268 gun pattern runs faster in the long term than the others do.

Keep the cheer,


Dave

davidl
Posts: 1
Joined: July 30th, 2010, 3:38 am

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by davidl » August 4th, 2010, 3:32 am

Dear member,

Could someone help a (french) journalist to explain what is this new spaceship for a non specialist of Life ?
Actually I need :
- a picture of this Gemini (the one on http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/index.php?title=Gemini need explanation, and I can not open .rle file ?!?). Especially I do not understand what are the black line in diagonal near Gemini.
- an idea of the "size" of this pattern (how much cell at the begining)
- to know if it is the first self-replicator ? Why is the speed so important ? And is the direction of moving unusual ?
- why is there so enthousiastic post on this forum ?

I apology for this simple question, but I hope that someone would help me... This is for a short news.

David Larousserie

137ben
Posts: 343
Joined: June 18th, 2010, 8:18 pm

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by 137ben » August 9th, 2010, 8:23 am

I guess the next step would be a gemini rake. I would guess the best solution would be something similar to Dvgrn's guns, except replace the still life reflectors with corderships. Actually, this might not work because it would move to fast...
But instead of using corderships, it would be possible to use a universal constructor based spaceship which travels at the perfect speed for the construction.

The other possibility is to build a gemini-breeder. This would have to be a group of universal constructor based spaceships firing gliders to synthesize Dave's gun. Unfortunately, if would probably be far to large to run with current processing power.

Batmanifestdestiny
Posts: 54
Joined: June 9th, 2010, 3:53 pm

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by Batmanifestdestiny » August 19th, 2010, 3:17 pm

davidl wrote:Dear member,

Could someone help a (french) journalist to explain what is this new spaceship for a non specialist of Life ?
Actually I need :
- a picture of this Gemini (the one on http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/index.php?title=Gemini need explanation, and I can not open .rle file ?!?). Especially I do not understand what are the black line in diagonal near Gemini.
- an idea of the "size" of this pattern (how much cell at the begining)
- to know if it is the first self-replicator ? Why is the speed so important ? And is the direction of moving unusual ?
- why is there so enthousiastic post on this forum ?

I apology for this simple question, but I hope that someone would help me... This is for a short news.

David Larousserie
The diagonal lines are lines of "gliders" that are what make Gemini work. They react with the large square heads in such ways to recreate the heads slightly farther along the path, and then they redirect themselves to those heads after destroying the first.

In the beginning, there are 846,278 cells.

This is the first self-replicator ever made in Conway's Game of Life. It's speed is important because it moves forward one unit in only about 36 million generations, and speculations thought that such a thing would take 10^8 million generations. The direction isn't very unusual, but the method in which it is achieved (self-replication) is. Imagine a cat that doesn't walk, but instead has kittens that look just like it that then grow up and kill their parent. Take several pictures of this cycle, and it would look like the cat is moving, because it is, just not in the usual way.

Every is so enthusiastic about Gemini because it's the first self-replicator, it's faster than expected, and it's at least 5 years ahead of its time.


For anything, I would contact the creator personally.

Jsboige
Posts: 3
Joined: November 8th, 2010, 11:18 am

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by Jsboige » November 8th, 2010, 8:28 pm

Hi all,

It was a very nice feeling to read that thread a few days ago so I thought I would share this.
First about explaining this to a large audience: I reckon it’s indeed a challenge, as I tried to tell my friends on FB. Here’s an extended attempt.
Feel free to correct me where I’m wrong, and excuse my non native English :



“This is all about a simplistic, deterministic and discreet universe simulation made of a simple 2D grid of binary cells, which can be evolve to an “on” or an “off” state over a series of synchronous time steps called generations.

Modern computer hardware and algorithms proved very good at emulating such a universe over a high number of generations, provided that the overall lattice keeps bounded or exhibits repetitions. Accordingly, over more than 40 years since the Game of Life was first invented on a board of GO by mathematician John Conway, a group of passionate computer scientists engaged into exploring that universe for the sake of it, just about how you’d do with our own much richer universe.

As the state of each cell is determined only by its own and its neighbor’s former values, one could think of simple quantum states that do indeed seem to evolve into stable atoms, oscillating systems and more remarkably to emit radiations, so called spaceships because of the intriguing patterns those moving shapes exhibit on the screen.

The many subsystems naturally emerging from those artificial chemical reaction were systematically investigated, classified, and then artificially engineered, giving birth to a true organic chemistry of its own kind, as a whole family of simple interacting molecules were progressively tamed and combined, essentially thanks to elementary radiation streams of the smallest known spaceships (gliders).

All along the way - they had gone from elementary quantum physics to compound organic chemistry - those searchers knew very well where they were going when they started leveraging those streams to synthesize a known set of artificial pseudo amino acids and proteins (Hershel tracks) and using those building blocks to emulate various digital electronic components, simple algorithms and even a few math theorems. Some of those guys could read their universe just about how Neo would read the Matrix, which they probably inspired to start with.

More recently, the premises of organelles (e.g. the construction arm) allowed to emulate a complete processing unit.
As a matter of fact, the Game of Life was long proven to be a universal Turing machine.

The next natural step was to lookup that primordial soup for some kind of DNA, a said replicator which was also proven to exist for long, and they could count on their rich engineering experience to aim specifically for it with the aid of powerful search algorithms, though the gap from proteins to genetics seemed gigantic.

On the 18th of May Andrew J. Wade announced in that thread that he single-handedly conceived such a replicator, providing the pattern for everyone to download and test.
That proto-cell is made of single chromosome (the instruction tape), which consists of a long stream of gliders to account for the thousands of nucleotides, and codes for the replication of 2 sophisticated ribosomes located at each end of it.
Those ribosomes keep reading and reflecting to each other the digital instructions encoded in the incoming streams, while being instructed to build a copy of themselves at some distance away in a direction orthogonal to the stream, leveraging so called “Spartan synthesis” to build Hershel tracks (proteins) from timed glider collisions. They’re even programmed to destroy their original copy, qualifying the whole thing as a slowly moving spaceship.

It is particularly impressive that this was achieved over a few months as an individual effort and of a striking coincidence that only 2 days later, a team of scientists claimed to have engineered the first synthetic life form.”

Jsboige
Posts: 3
Joined: November 8th, 2010, 11:18 am

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by Jsboige » November 8th, 2010, 10:42 pm

Now more about me and my feelings about it.

I was interested in the GoL about 10 years ago, when I was doing a MRes in AI at Sussex Uni. I had contemplated doing my thesis on using genetic algorithms to develop a pattern builder. I guess my personal understanding of the whole thing above probably suits that approach, though I had quickly realized that I was not smart, brave nor computer literate enough to deliver, and I had switched to some other topic (LIF Neural Nets for that matters). The latter is not true anymore after many years of professional programming.

In the mean time, I had thought a bit about the existing tools as you guys were talking about, without actually reading code. Of course I’d dive into Golly and Andrew’s script now if I could find some time for that. Hopefully I’ll have that opportunity in the future.

Yet, I have the feeling that my understanding of the tools at that time, and what lacked to make my MRes assignment reasonable, practically still hold true, except of course for Andrew’s chromosome compiler, which should be an exciting piece of code to read.

More specifically, I found it a bit dull that Andrew still had to spend a long time manipulating coordinates to switch between manual design and brute force results.

So please let me try to remember those ideas I had of the right tools. I suppose Golly might have some of the following stuff already. You can let me know.
I’m thinking of a true IDE, and neither what I’ve seen in my little experience of Golly, nor what you guys seem to discuss, let me think that there is one already available.

I’m used to Visual Studio, so I might be biased in picturing the whole thing, but it’s not a point really, and I reckon I'll describe something quite different.
I suppose that there must be a nice API to build Perl and Python scripts leveraging most out of the engine, but I have a feeling you could get much better for the UI.

So here’s a series of ideas:
• The starting point would be a 3D Editor / Navigator (depth being time) instead of those layers, which as I understand are more of a Photoshop flavor. Moving to 3D thinking and designing could bring new perspective IMHO
• This would allow for snapping, which is what I believe you’d need to avoid tedious coordinate manipulations and color matching. I could think of an object toolbox where you drag and drop oscillators and spaceships to existing systems just by snapping the corresponding 3D objects to available hooks visually colored accordingly to the corresponding periods, greatly easing the fine tune positioning of the different elements.
• Also, that surface coloring should probably adapt to fit the target hook characteristics and the definition of those is critical. I’m confident you guys probably got the ontology right (at least the vocabulary sounds robust), so bringing that to the UX shouldn't be to hard: one would be contextually proposed objects filtered against custom characteristics without having to rely on brute force. You could even do without drag and dropping. Right click a colored hook, filter the search collection to your needs, select an object, configure, translate, rotate, done. One could add an extension point to delegate some of the specific UX to some objects hierarchy providers and keep the core lighter.
• That brings to my last vision of that time back in Brighton, when I was thinking about genetic algorithms. My feeling was that if you get the ontology right such that the UX can really become that 3D IDE I’m thinking of, then there’s no reason why genetic algorithm over that ontology wouldn’t be as excellent a search method as low level manual electronic engineering. You’ll laugh about this, but if we can now actually start thinking about mutating the instruction tape over the Hershel proteins grammar to evolve Gemini populations through “artificial artificial GAs”, this is a 1000 times overkill over simply using GAs over the actual schematics of any Life objects through a much simpler ontology based / high level genetic code. Watching those collections of spaceship variations just as collections of pinned butterfly species back in then was a real shocker, and this had nothing to do with Gemini though it did have a lot to do with genetics.
• Accordingly, figuring out that ontology/high level genetics would be an exciting project I’d still love to be part of, though I’d have plenty to catch up obviously, even if I can miraculously get your stuff to build on Iron Python.

Well that’s it. Honestly I won’t have any more time to spend on this on short term, and I’d rather let those ideas find their way if any into the community, than simply moving on already.
Thanks for reading,

Jesse

TLUL
Posts: 15
Joined: January 24th, 2010, 1:16 am

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by TLUL » November 9th, 2010, 11:08 am

@Jsboige...

That's quite the speech. Personally, I agree that the tools for working with Life are rather less intuitive than they could be. However, a key point to remember is that they are designed for speed as well as simplicity. A 3D Life editor would be great in some ways, but it would perform very poorly compared to Golly on large patterns such as Gemini.

However, it is certainly an interesting concept. Seeing glider streams as 3D diagonal streaks would make it much easier to see how to cross them properly, and herschel tracks would probably be easier to develop.

It's worth some thought, but at first glance, I don't really think it would work well for large patterns like Gemini — only for smaller ones, or for designing the components of larger patterns.
Carpe per diem: Seize the check.

Jsboige
Posts: 3
Joined: November 8th, 2010, 11:18 am

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by Jsboige » November 9th, 2010, 2:28 pm

@TLUL: Thanks for your appreciation
TLUL wrote:@Jsboige...
However, a key point to remember is that they are designed for speed as well as simplicity. A 3D Life editor would be great in some ways, but it would perform very poorly compared to Golly on large patterns such as Gemini.
I can see where you're going, but I wasn't thinking of actually running the simulation in 3D as when watching a movie in Minority Report, though that would be a lot of fun for sure !
I would imagine that you set a depth window, say 100 gens, only when the game is paused, in order to do your static engineering. You could use the mouse wheel for instance to fine translate the window, which shouldn't be a problem even on large patterns like Gemini.
When you're done, then you can switch back to conventional Golly to get it running.

Actually on a second thought I think that 3D thing isn't that important. The surface highlighted hooks idea can very well be translated to similar highlighted linear hooks in 2D, as long as mouse wheel translating avoids having to do the color matching on the inserted objects rather than on the target grid.
What 3D would bring, when plugging things together, is the capability to figure out multiple interactions at once, and probably to release the constraints on objects bounding boxes, when the fact that any two objects interact a second time in future gens is not anymore an issue to deal with, but an actual feature to leverage (you probably got that in your algorithms already).

Also, everything I mentioned about objects taxonomy and life ontology still holds true in 2D, the main idea being simply to get those classification parameters, which I suppose are already plenty available in the API, also available to ease manual grid editing.

Cheers,

Jesse

HartmutHolzwart
Posts: 840
Joined: June 27th, 2009, 10:58 am
Location: Germany

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by HartmutHolzwart » December 31st, 2011, 12:06 pm

It has been a year now since Dave Greene has reported on any progress concerning the Gemini reloaded.

Did I overlook something? Not even a p.o.c. for his new design?

Happy New Year!

Hartmut

User avatar
dvgrn
Moderator
Posts: 10610
Joined: May 17th, 2009, 11:00 pm
Location: Madison, WI
Contact:

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by dvgrn » January 1st, 2013, 2:47 am

HartmutHolzwart wrote:It has been a year now since Dave Greene has reported on any progress concerning the Gemini reloaded.

Did I overlook something? Not even a p.o.c. for his new design?

Happy New Year!
Well, now another year has gone whooshing by -- I've been on sabbatical from Game of Life projects for the last year or two, it seems. But I'm back working on the Geminoid project now. Various proof-of-concept constructions will be coming along eventually.

Just to get started, here is a rough upper bound for the size of a self-destruct mechanism for Herschel circuitry. I've sent this to at least three people, and thought I had also posted it somewhere. But I can't seem to find it now, so here's a slightly improved version:

Code: Select all

#C Blockic meteor shower leading to Herschel-circuit extinction
x = 299, y = 273, rule = LifeHistory
24.2A$24.2A3$29.2A$29.2A10$51.2A$51.2A2$63.2A$45.2A16.2A$4.2A39.2A9.
2A$4.2A25.2A23.2A14.2A$31.2A39.2A3$2A34.2A$2A34.2A45.2A$83.2A$76.2A$
76.2A14.2A$92.2A$2.2A$2.2A2$103.2A$60.2A41.2A$60.2A34.2A$96.2A14.2A$
2A110.2A$2A$64.2A$64.2A$123.2A$123.2A$116.2A$116.2A14.2A$132.2A$3.2A
64.2A$3.2A64.2A2$143.2A$10.2A131.2A$10.2A124.2A$136.2A14.2A$26.2A124.
2A$26.2A$66.2A93.2A$66.2A93.2A$8.2A21.2A121.2A$8.2A21.2A121.2A14.2A$
170.2A$83.2A$83.2A$68.2A39.2A$68.2A39.2A2$134.2A$11.2A121.2A48.2A$11.
2A171.2A$177.2A$80.2A95.2A14.2A$18.2A60.2A111.2A$18.2A86.2A$106.2A2$
33.2A96.2A$33.2A96.2A15.2A$82.2A64.2A$16.2A64.2A$16.2A20.2A68.2A$38.
2A68.2A2$133.2A$133.2A2$145.2A$126.2A17.2A$19.2A105.2A$19.2A75.2A72.
2A$96.2A72.2A3$147.2A$70.2A75.2A$70.2A$123.2A$35.2A86.2A$35.2A56.2A
72.2A$74.2A17.2A43.2A27.2A$74.2A62.2A$40.2A$40.2A$125.2A$125.2A$95.2A
72.2A$95.2A68.2A2.2A$165.2A$135.2A$116.2A17.2A$116.2A5$89.2A46.2A23.
2A$89.2A46.2A23.2A2$113.2A$113.2A$93.2A$93.2A$164.2A$126.2A36.2A$126.
2A$115.2A$115.2A6$112.2A9.2A26.2A$112.2A9.2A26.2A4$116.2A$116.2A$125.
2A$125.2A$148.2A$148.2A5$114.2A$114.2A34.2A$150.2A7$111.2A$111.2A5$
133.2A$113.2A18.2A$113.2A5$111.2A$111.2A$130.2A$130.2A2$115.2A$115.2A
151.2A$268.2A2$132.2A$132.2A134.2A$267.B2AB$268.2B6.B$269.2B4.3B$268.
14B$268.14B14.3A$129.2A134.17B14.A$129.2A134.18B14.A$256.29B$254.B.
30B$253.2A32B$133.2A118.2A32B$133.2A119.28B4.B2A$254.3B4.B.16B7.BA.A$
265.10B.2B11.A$266.9B14.2A$263.11B$262.12B$262.12B$262.11B$262.8B.4B$
262.7B4.2A$262.7B4.A$262.6B6.3A$261.7B8.A$260.8B$259.8B$258.9B$257.4B
.6B$256.4B.7B$255.4B2.6B15.2A$254.4B3.8B4.B8.A$253.4B5.B2A6B.4B3.BA.A
$252.4B5.2B2A13B.B2A$251.4B7.18B$250.4B9.17B$249.4B13.13B$248.4B13.
12B$247.4B14.10B$246.4B14.11B$245.4B15.7B.2B$244.4B15.11B$243.4B17.
11B$242.4B18.11B$241.4B19.11B$240.4B18.2AB2.8B$209.A29.4B18.A.AB3.7B$
209.3A26.4B19.A6.7B$212.A24.4B19.2A7.6B$211.2A23.4B29.7B$211.4B20.4B
30.8B$213.3B18.4B32.8B$213.4B16.4B33.8B$214.4B14.4B33.6B2.B2A$215.4B
12.4B34.7B.BA.A$216.4B10.4B36.6B4.A$217.4B8.4B37.6B4.2A$218.4B6.4B38.
6B$219.4B4.4B38.8B$220.4B2.4B38.8B$216.A4.8B22.A16.9B$214.3A5.6B21.3A
16.9B$213.A9.4B21.A18.10B$213.2A7.6B20.2A17.3B2A5B$203.2A6.4B6.8B17.
4B11.2A3.4B2A5B$204.A6.2B7.4B2.4B15.3B14.A3.11B$204.A.AB2.5B4.4B4.4B
14.4B13.A.A12B$205.2AB2.B2A2B.B.4B6.4B12.5B8.2A4.2A2.8B$206.4BA2BA7B.
2B.3B.4B11.6B8.A9.7B4.2A$207.4B2A27B2.8B8.A.AB7.6B4.A$207.16B2A26B8.
2AB.3B3.6B.BA.A$209.14B2A25B11.14B.B2A$209.3A29B.7B12.16B$209.2BA38B
12.14B$209.BA5B6.2B3.2B2.19B11.16B$209.6B19.17B8.18B$210.5B21.15B.2B
2.20B$211.3B23.38B$209.7B21.8B.20B.7B$209.2A.B.2A19.8B3.2B2A16B2.6B$
210.A3.A20.2A3.B5.2B2A16B3.6B$207.3A5.3A18.A10.18B6.4B$207.A9.A15.3A
12.B.3B.4B12.B2A2B$233.A19.4B14.2A.B2A$252.4B18.BA.A$251.4B22.A$250.
4B23.2A$249.4B$248.4B$248.3B$246.4B$246.2A$247.A$244.3A$244.A!
That's 102 blocks plus the trigger glider, just to get rid of a 153-cell constellation (a variant of a Silver reflector with all four outputs blocked). I'm hoping a good search utility will be able to cut that ratio down considerably, maybe to less than 40 blocks -- one cell of self-destruct mechanism per cell of target pattern, let's say. Unfortunately, while I started to write a search utility along these lines last year, and Paul Chapman gave it a try the year before, I don't think either of us got far enough to have any code worth saving...!

To get down close to that 1:1 ratio, I'm thinking it will be necessary to intersperse the "Seeds Of Destruction" (SODs) in among the catalysts in the target pattern. The SODs don't have to be blocks, but should be Spartan (less than eight ON cells, and no aircraft carriers or snakes.) And of course they can only be placed in locations that don't get in the way of the normal functioning of the Herschel conduit.

They also shouldn't be so close to the catalysts or to each other that they make the whole constellation difficult to construct incrementally. A good rule of thumb is to leave two empty cells between adjacent still lifes -- either orthogonally or diagonally (or both, of course). For example, 4b2o$4bobo$6bo$6b2o$2o$o$b3o$3bo! is plenty of distance, but 2b2o$2bobo$4bo$4b2o$2o$o$b3o$3bo! (found in a variant of the L156 Herschel conduit) is a little too close for comfort.

---------------------------------------

So -- anyone care to give this a try? The immediate challenge is to put together a functioning version of the above pattern with an initial stable population smaller than 561 cells, that still self-destructs cleanly when you hit it with a glider. Smallest starting population wins. [Fair warning, though: if a competition develops, I'll be tempted to try again also...!]

I specified "initial stable population" because standard population-minimizing trickery, such as removing one cell from each block, is not allowed here (and the gliders don't count either). The trigger glider lane for the destruct signal can be anywhere besides the input lane for the reflector. It would also be nice to keep the output lanes clear, I suppose, but that's not a requirement for this test pattern.

If someone writes a useful generalized Seeds of Destruction search utility to solve this problem, I'll post a Geminoid construction of a self-destructing thank-you note to the author.

User avatar
Gustavo6046
Posts: 647
Joined: December 7th, 2013, 6:26 pm
Location: Brazil.

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by Gustavo6046 » February 18th, 2015, 4:29 pm

Which is the slowest possible velocity this thing can reach using proper configuration of the modules and the distance between them?
*yawn* What a nothing-to-do day! Let's be the only person in the world to do CGOL during boring times. :)

User avatar
dvgrn
Moderator
Posts: 10610
Joined: May 17th, 2009, 11:00 pm
Location: Madison, WI
Contact:

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by dvgrn » February 18th, 2015, 4:50 pm

Gustavo6046 wrote:Which is the slowest possible velocity this thing can reach using proper configuration of the modules and the distance between them?
There is no minimum speed, and configuration is very easy. If you want the Gemini to go slower, just increase the distance between the two replicator units. The period will increase by 8 ticks for every 1-cell diagonal step.

User avatar
Gustavo6046
Posts: 647
Joined: December 7th, 2013, 6:26 pm
Location: Brazil.

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by Gustavo6046 » February 19th, 2015, 9:32 am

Means I can make its speed ultra slow but in balance increase bounding box? Also I wish to know there could be an c spaceship based in UCC (it's period is high, but it moves a single cell every gen, like 190847c/190847.
I wish someone destroyed the destruction arm. That would be a mark that was only reached in HighLife by replicators.
*yawn* What a nothing-to-do day! Let's be the only person in the world to do CGOL during boring times. :)

Sphenocorona
Posts: 549
Joined: April 9th, 2013, 11:03 pm

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by Sphenocorona » February 19th, 2015, 7:39 pm

It has been proven impossible to create a spaceship which moves at speed of c, even a universal constructor - the salvos such a constructor emits are slower than light, and it is very trivial to show that a UC spaceship cannot go faster than these.

User avatar
Extrementhusiast
Posts: 1966
Joined: June 16th, 2009, 11:24 pm
Location: USA

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by Extrementhusiast » February 19th, 2015, 9:10 pm

Sphenocorona wrote:It has been proven impossible to create a spaceship which moves at speed of c, even a universal constructor - the salvos such a constructor emits are slower than light, and it is very trivial to show that a UC spaceship cannot go faster than these.
Correction: it has been proven impossible to create a finitely large spaceship which moves at a speed of c. Infinitely long spaceships can travel at speed c:

Code: Select all

x = 100, y = 2, rule = B3/S23:T100,0
100o$b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b
2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o2b2o!
I Like My Heisenburps! (and others)

Sphenocorona
Posts: 549
Joined: April 9th, 2013, 11:03 pm

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by Sphenocorona » February 20th, 2015, 1:01 am

Oh yes, I somehow managed to forget about that.

But I'm pretty sure even an infinitely long UC-based spaceship can't be faster than (1,0)c/2 or (1,1)c/4.

User avatar
simsim314
Posts: 1823
Joined: February 10th, 2014, 1:27 pm

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by simsim314 » February 20th, 2015, 2:03 am

Sphenocorona wrote:I'm pretty sure even an infinitely long UC-based spaceship can't be faster than (1,0)c/2 or (1,1)c/4.
c/2 orthogonal and c/4 diagonal limitations hold only for finite signal. In GOL no finite signal propagates inside "empty universe" faster than those speeds after a while - i.e. line can propagate faster but it can't hold for long - it's theoretical limitation of the rule. Obviously inside non empty universe c still holds.

Anyway infinite UC is ill defined.
Gustavo6046 wrote:Means I can make its speed ultra slow but in balance increase bounding box?
You always increase bounding box to configure speed if you want infinite range of speeds. Inside bounding box there is limited number of configurations, while you expect infinite number of speeds - it means that no constant size bounding box can hold information of all the speeds you expect, i.e. bounding box size must increase.

User avatar
Gustavo6046
Posts: 647
Joined: December 7th, 2013, 6:26 pm
Location: Brazil.

Re: Universal Constructor Based Spaceship

Post by Gustavo6046 » March 9th, 2015, 1:55 pm

What if I build a Geminoid in a torus?
*yawn* What a nothing-to-do day! Let's be the only person in the world to do CGOL during boring times. :)

Post Reply