Is this discovered?

[Seawolf]

Code: Select all

x = 64, y = 56, rule = B3/S23
7$42b2o3b4o$37b3obo2bo6bo$41bo2bo2b5o$41bo2bo$43bo$40bobo$41bo12$20bo$
20bo$20bo$24bo$20b3o2bo$19bo4bo$19bo3bo$20b3o3$19bobo$19bobo$19bobo$
19bobo$20b2o!

Is this puffer discovered?

[Ethanagor]

This is a form of the switch engine, which is a puffer engine discovered in the 1980s. There are many known puffers for it. For this reason, I am sorry to say that this is also most likely known.

[dvgrn]

This is a form of the switch engine, which is a puffer engine discovered in the 1980s. There are many known puffers for it. For this reason, I am sorry to say that this is also most likely known.

More specifically, the pattern settles down to become two non-interacting copies of the block-laying switch engine, which oddly enough is still one of the only two known stabilizations of a switch engine -- known since 1971, in point of fact.

Seems to me there ought to be another switch engine stabilization out there somewhere -- some random junk that the exhaust from the switch engine hits, and produces exactly the same junk at an (8,8) offset, where the next switch engine exhaust can hit it again, and so on.

But apparently if a switch-engine "orbit" along these lines exists, it's most likely at least fifty million times less common than the block-laying variety. Catagolue has found almost eighty million block-laying switch engines and almost thirty million glider-producing switch engines, but no other puffers based on a single switch engine.