LifeWiki:News archive

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

2019

• Apr. 21: Improvements to glider syntheses mean that every 15-bit still life has a recipe with at most 13 gliders. The upper limit is currently 12 gliders for 14-bit still lifes, 10 gliders for 13 bits, 8 gliders for 12 bits, and 7 gliders for 11 bits.
• Apr. 17: Tanner Jacobi and Matthias Merzenich set several new bounding-box records with a new glider gun mechanism based on filtered MWSSes.
• Apr. 14: Michael Simkin completes a self-constructing puffer pattern which he calls Remini ("retro Gemini"), using a single-channel design with nothing but 1970s circuit mechanisms.
• Apr. 10: Jeremy Tan releases a new glider recipe database, Shinjuku, specifically for tracking lowest-cost syntheses.
• Apr. 6-7: LifeViewer standardizes support for triangular neighbourhoods starting with Build 320.
• Apr. 5: An exhaustive computer search run by Nathaniel Johnston reveals that there are 14,223,867,298 strict and 15,851,861,075 pseudo 33-bit still lifes, including eleven pseudo still lifes that can be partitioned into three stable pieces but not two, and none that can be partitioned into four stable pieces but not two or three.[1]
• 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.[2]
• Mar. 24: apgsearch v5.03 gains the ability to log 'megasized' soups with final populations exceeding 3,000.[3] apgsearch 5.x can also pre-process asymmetric C1 B3/S23 soups on GPUs with CUDA support.[4]
• Mar. 7: A spider synthesis using 574 gliders and 9 LWSSes is found by Martin Grant. [5]
• 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