LifeWiki:News archive

The following is a list of past news items that ran on the Main Page:

2019

• Mar. 27: The last remaining 14-bit still life, xs14_4ai3zwo9a4, appears in a C1 soup on Catagolue, in a haul submitted by an anonymous user.[1]
• Mar. 24: apgsearch v5.03 gains the ability to log 'megasized' soups with final populations exceeding 3,000.[2] apgsearch 5.x can also pre-process asymmetric C1 B3/S23 soups on GPUs with CUDA support.[3]
• Mar. 7: A spider synthesis using 574 gliders and 9 LWSSes is found by Martin Grant. [4]
• Mar. 3: A period-120 oscillator, the highest period thus far, occurs from a natural soup on Catagolue.
• Mar. 2: Several symmetric-soup diehards with lifespans over 1500 ticks have been found by 'carybe', using apgsearch.
• Feb. 12: A lightweight Schick engine appears from a natural (C1) soup on Catagolue.
• Feb. 9: A 47,575-tick 16x16 methuselah found by Adam Goucher via apgsearch yields a 16-cell, 47,487-tick methuselah. This discovery skips over several empty 1000-tick bins in Catagolue above the previous record 16x16 methuselah, Homer.
• Feb. 4: A glider detection and removal upgrade in apgsearch version 4.91 gives a search speed boost of well over 50% compared to version 4.88.
• Feb. 4: Tanner Jacobi and Martin Grant find a recipe, subsequently reduced to 88 gliders, for the first-ever synthesizable c/4 spaceship, 46P4H1V0.
• Jan. 21 - Feb. 1: Additional (2,1)c/6 minstrels and spaceship connections are found, bringing the number of combinations of elementary minstrels into double digits.
• Jan. 25: the Pattern of the Year 2018 competition concludes, with Sir Robin taking first place.
• Jan. 25: LifeViewer build 282 goes live on the LifeWiki and forums, with several enhancements including new labeling functionality.
• Jan. 20: Catagolue collects a record-setting longest-lived asymmetrical 16x16 diehard, with a lifespan of 1058 ticks.
• Jan. 17: A new period-8 domino sparker, 230P8, is discovered by Arie Paap and reduced by 'Bullet51'.
• Jan 16-18: Four new minstrels are found, plus a lucky connection of an existing minstrel to knightwave, creating for the first time a grammar that allows for an infinite number of distinct elementary knightships.
• Jan 10: A new period-24 oscillator, dueling banjos, turns up in an apgsearch soup search. Uses so far include a smaller period-24 glider gun, with associated improvements to p16 and p48 glider guns and a p48 LWSS gun.
• Jan 3-7: Record-setting diehards are found by Rob Liston and Apple Bottom via apgsearch.

2018

• Dec 7: A new oblique camelship, much smaller and lower population than the Gemini 3 variant from 2010, is completed by Chris Cain.
• Dec 2: The value of V, the lowest number for which an oscillator can be constructed with strict volatility 1 for that or any higher period, is reduced to 3,506,909 ticks.
• Nov 30: Adam P. Goucher sets another new record using the latest apgsearch by finding "Homer", a 16x16 methuselah with a lifespan of 42883 ticks.
• Nov 28: An update to slsparse allows it to recognize 45-degree MWSS-to-G converters in any orientation, and use unidirectional slow salvo recipes to construct them.
• Nov 18: Entity Valkyrie discovers a new period-13 FNG suppression mechanism, allowing the true period-52 glider gun to be reduced to less than a seventh of its previous size.
• Nov 12: A working 0E0P metacell is announced by Adam P. Goucher, along with several improvements to slmake, the program used to compile the metacell.
• Oct 31: An update to apgsearch sets another new record by finding a 16x16 methuselah with a lifespan of 42,100 ticks.
• Oct 31: A self-constructing "loopship", a new type of spaceship with a non-Geminoid design, is completed by Dave Greene.
• Oct 30: A periodic (p5 or p4) quinti-Snark is constructed by Tanner Jacobi, with the usual implications for reductions to the glider gun collection.
• Oct 29: apgluxe v4.56-ll2.0.5 and Catagolue add support for BSFKL rules.
• Oct 28: A record-setting 39,693-tick methuselah, Wilma, is discovered by Rob Liston using a custom FPGA soup searcher.
• Oct 27: An new LWSS synthesis by Chris Cain allows for LWSS, MWSS, and HWSS guns with pseudo periods as low as 18. 18 is the minimum for HWSS streams.)
• Oct 21: Hartmut Holzwart completes a two-dimensionally extensible wick-supporting pushalong with a minimum width of over a thousand cells.
• Oct 21: New Orthogonoids with periods 2²⁷ and 2²⁸ are constructed by Dave Greene, followed by a 2²⁵ version by Adam P. Goucher.
• Oct 12: A new period-14 oscillator, 34P14.1, is found by 'carybe'.
• Oct 11: Christoph R. discovers a new Fireship tagalong.
• Oct 10: Dave Greene completes the construction of two new HashLife-friendly Demonoids.
• Oct 07: A complex 140-glider synthesis of a c/2 signal traveling along a diagonal long^N barge wire is completed by Martin Grant.
• Oct 03: A p4 bouncer reflector is constructed by Arie Paap. With the p9 reflector, this completes the set of colour-changing and colour-preserving reflectors with periods from 4 to 9.
• Oct 02: A p9 reflector is discovered by Matthias Merzenich and "carybe" based on Noam Elkies' bouncer reaction. This is the first reflector capable of reflecting a p27 glider stream.
• Oct 02: A true p33 gun is discovered by Arie Paap and Matthias Merzenich.
• Sep 27: A true p52 gun is completed by a collaborative effort.
• Sep 9: Dave Greene completes the construction of a stable line crosser with a repeat time of 501 ticks.
• Jul 15/19: The Minstrels, a group of tagalongs for Sir Robin, are discovered.
• Jun 14: The construction of a reverse caber-tosser shows that any glider-constructible object can be constructed with at most 35 gliders.
• Apr 04: A p3 reflector is discovered by Arie Paap based on Tanner Jacobi's bumper reaction. This is the first reflector capable of reflecting a p39 glider stream.
• Mar 06: Sir Robin, the first elementary knightship in Life, is discovered by Adam P. Goucher and Tom Rokicki.
• Feb 19: The 2-engine Cordership wins the 2017 Pattern of the Year competition, with Tanner's p46 taking second place.

Also see

• LifeWiki:Did you know archive