Life Digits (1)

“Using the standard ‘life digits‘ what is the smallest number base that can produce infinite growth?”

asks knightlife in a post at ConwayLife.com.

As always, a quick modification of my script in Perl for Golly, wait 7 minutes and… profit.

The string in question is 0011001000100011 and has 16 “bits“.

Pattern (RLE)

#CXRLE Pos=0,0
x = 51, y = 5, rule = B3/S23
3ob3obobob3ob3obob3ob3ob3obob3ob3ob3obobo$obobobobobobobobobobobobobob
obobobobobobobobobobobo$obobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobob
obobo$obobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobobo$3ob3obobob3o
b3obob3ob3ob3obob3ob3ob3obobo!

It produces two block-laying switch engines, and achieves stability at generation 1507:

And also, happy birthday to me!

n-Cell Thick Patterns (3)

It is time for a list of the patterns that have maximum final noninfinite population for each minimal bounding box.

n-Cell Thick Patterns (2)

In this post, I resume the study of the minimum length of an n-cell thick pattern that exhibits infinite growth.

Details on 4-cell thick patterns were pending.  Find out about them here.

n-Cell Thick Patterns (1)

Couldn’t hold my curiosity any longer: “What is the minimum length of an n-cell thick pattern that exhibits infinite growth?”

From November 1997 to October 1998 Paul Callahan found several compact patterns that exhibit infinite growth. Two of these patterns give useful upper and a lower bounds, respectively.

1-cell thick

Minimum-length pattern that exhibits infinite growth:  1 x 39

5-cell thick

Minimum-length 5-cell thick pattern that exhibits infinite growth: 5 x 5

What’s in between 1-cell thick and 5-cell thick patterns? How about 2-cell thick, 3-cell thick, and 4-cell thick patterns? I have modified my script in Perl for Golly to explore this question.

See details below for 2-cell thick and 3-cell thick patterns…