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!