First natural glider
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The first natural glider (abbreviated to FNG) is the first glider released by a Herschel with systematic designation SW-2T21.[1]
| Simkin glider gun emits infinite copies of the First natural glider. (click above to open LifeViewer) RLE: here Plaintext: here |
FNG in Herschel tracks
The first natural glider is the main limiting factor in Herschel track compression. Consider the time difference (period) between successive Herschels:
- Above 69 ticks, FNG can escape safely before the next Herschel arrives; two examples of this kind are Simkin glider gun and period-256 glider gun.
- At 63~68, FNG needs to be suppressed and the simple eater 1 works; see for example p67 Herschel loop.
- For 61 and 62, the quicker eater 2 is required. This is shown in David Buckingham's p61 Herschel loop 1.
- At 57~60, the even faster eater 5, tub-with-tail eater (or 7×9 eater for different clearance) becomes necessary. Dietrich Leithner's p57 Herschel loop 1 and Simkin's p60 demonstrate this case. Eater 5 is also employed in some cases with higher period, e.g. p61 Herschel loop 2 and period-61 glider gun.
- Below 57, the deletion of FNG is trickier. For composite periods, some sparkers might be able to "reach in" and delete the glider faster than the eater 5, for instance the 53P13 in p13-assisted period-52 glider gun.
FNG in conduit connections
Some conduits that output a Herschel, like F166 and Lx138, require the FNG to be eaten as the FNG would hit a catalyst, but the FNG goes outside of the reaction envelope, so it can be eaten easily.
There are conduits that can only be connected to a dependent conduit since the FNG would hit one of the catalysts, such as the Fx119 output of Bx106, the Spartan form of Fx176 and most suppressed versions of Fx119. There are also conduits that can only be connected to a independent conduit as the FNG is needed to clean up an object, such as Bx106, Bx125, Bx222, BF20H, Lx86, F171 and one of forms of RR56H.
Some conduits can have lowered repeat times if the following conduit is dependent, as the FNG of the output Herschel is eaten in the conduit itself and has to pass through the conduit, such as F189 (where the repeat time can be decreased from 318 ticks to 118 ticks), R126, the unsuppressed form of Lx73, and the Blockic form of R64.
See also
References
- ↑ Dave Greene (June 2, 2022). Re: Thread for basic questions (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
External links
- First natural glider at the Life Lexicon