Talk:Gun

Guns in life-like cellular automata

Due to the small speed-of-light spaceships in many of the rules with B2, it is somewhat trivial to find low-period guns in these rules. I think it would be infeasible to keep track of all of the B2 rules that contain guns on this page. The 'Guns in Life-like cellular automata' section should probably say something along these lines: "Due to some small spaceships in life-like cellular automata with birth at two cells (B2) many low-period spaceship guns have been found using tools such as WinLifeSearch. In contrast, there are very few rules without B2 that are known to contain guns. The following is a list of rules without B2 that have known guns: ..."
~Sokwe 07:02, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Seconded. (I created the section initially.) Calcyman 21:12, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure if LWSS (MWSS, HWSS...) guns should be noted in the section "other guns"; they might deserve a separate listing... or a footnote to the glider section, since I presume most of those are based on the 3-glider synthesis. Any rule with small spaceships like the glider is bound to have glider constructions for various objects, so it doesn't seem to me that having glider-compounding guns is a particularly interesting fact about a rule. Gliderless guns are known for Life itself however, as well as for HighLife.

Also, the B37 rules must be something else than LWSS guns; would that be guns firing "Rderships", a slip of the finger, or something else? (Some general sourcing wouldn't hurt, either.) --Tropylium 06:16, 19 September 2011 (CDT)

True-period gun credits

The list of credits for true-period guns is difficult to read. I suggest replacing it with a table, like the one on the oscillator page. It could look something like this:

Period Discoverer Year of discovery 22 David Eppstein and Jason Summers 2000 24 Noam Elkies 1997 30 Bill Gosper 1970 36 Jason Summers 2004 40 Adam P. Goucher and Matthias Merzenich 2013 44 David Buckingham 1992 45 Matthias Merzenich 2010 46 Bill Gosper 1971 48 Noam Elkies 1997 50 Dean Hickerson and Noam Elkies 1996 54 Dietrich Leithner 1998 55 Stephen Silver 1998 56 Dietrich Leithner 1998 59 Adam P. Goucher and Jason Summers 2009 60 Bill Gosper 1970