Finding Gardens of Eden

[lukebradford]

Hi all,

What's the best way to look for Gardens of Eden in a Life-like CA, e.g. Live Free or Die (s0/b2)? Does anyone have tools for this purpose? I suspect that there are very small orphans and CAs in this rule but before I brute-force search, I thought I'd see if anyone knows a better method.

Thanks,

Luke

[twinb7]

I could try to use Java Life Search, that's all I know how to use...

[lukebradford]

Where can I find that?

[dvgrn]

Where can I find that?

Here's the forum thread for the download. If that doesn't work, try the link here instead.

You can certainly use JLS to confirm that a given pattern is a Garden of Eden -- set up the test pattern and ask JLS to find a one-tick predecessor (and make sure you set "after last generation is: Unknown" in the Properties.) If JLS can't find anything, and if the search runs to completion, you've definitely got a GoE. But I can't think offhand how to use JLS to actually find a GoE pattern in the first place.

For that you probably need something more like Nicolay Beluchenko's custom GoE-finding code. I can't lay my hands on a link for that at the moment, but I'll have a look around... I don't remember whether he had hard-coded the B3/S23 rule in his search utility -- there are various optimizations that you can get away with if you are dealing with only one rule.

EDIT: An old link from 2009 appears to be still in working order. But it's just the executable, and there's no sign of a way to change the rule -- this is a B3/S23-specific GOE finder. I'll write and ask if the source code is available; further bulletins as events warrant.

[lukebradford]

Thanks!