77topaz wrote:All he did was change a single number in Danny's RLE to trivially lengthen the reaction, so I think that post actually falls in the latter category. Or maybe that was your point to begin with?
The effects of wwei's suggested change aren't actually particularly trivial, but the specific suggestion doesn't seem to work out. It's not clear at first that the altered pattern will grow forever, but by T=100,000 there are a couple of high-period puffers heading west and south, and it doesn't look likely that anything else is going to be able to stop them.
It does seem pretty likely that moving that third dot to different faraway locations will keep producing longer- and longer-lived methuselahs, with no obvious upper bound. For example, the
next pattern in wwei's series is in fact a methuselah, settling into an 8-tick cycle after the last domino spark ( [-9354,4370] ) fades out at T=44102.
Code: Select all
x = 3334, y = 2, rule = B2-ae3ai5c6c7c/S03acein4e5ei6cei7c8
obo$3333bo!