Catagolue

Catagolue
Conducted by	Adam P. Goucher
Type	Distributed
Year(s)	2015 – 2016
Status	Ongoing
Parameters
Universe	Infinite plane
Soup size	16×16
Initial soup density	0.5
Soups searched	>6,862,283,557,705
Results
Total objects	>149,901,065,407,728
Distinct objects	>102,759

Catagolue is an ongoing distributed census of naturally occurring ash objects conducted by Adam P. Goucher, started in late February 2015. The census is primarily focused on asymmetric soups in Conway's Life, but supports arbitrary totalistic and semi-totalistic rules and a variety of symmetries.

The results are obtained by evolving random soups of size 16×16 with density 0.5 in an infinite planar universe; as of September 4, 2016, more than 6,862,283,557,705 soups have been investigated by the census's participants, yielding a total of more than 149,901,065,407,728 objects of 102,759 distinct types. Submissions of new results (called "hauls") are subjected to both statistical tests and peer-review by other participants before being committed to the census.

Catagolue is primarily fed by apgsearch, including apgnano (apgsearch 2.x) and apgmera (apgsearch 3.x) as well as Aidan F. Pierce's hacked version supporting arbitrary semi-totalistic cellular automata. Each resulting object is identified by apgsearch by its unique apgcode; the Catagolue website gives overviews over the various classes of objects found, and provides further information as well as sample soups for each object.

History

Main article: History of Catagolue

Catagolue became operative on February 20, 2015. The B3/S23/C1 census reached a total of one trillion objects on April 24, 2015, ten trillion objects on September 2, 2015, 100 trillion objects on June 20, 2016, and 150 on September 4th.

Results

Also see: Most common objects on Catagolue

As of September 4, 2016, more than 6,862,283,557,705 soups have been investigated by the census's participants, yielding a total of more than 149,901,065,407,728 objects. 102,759 distinct objects were identified, including:

• Still lifes:
  • All still lifes up to 13 bits.
  • 617 of the 619 14-bit still lifes.
  • 1275 of the 1353 15-bit still lifes.
  • 1 asymmetric 45-bit still life (Cthulhu).
  • 1 D2_+1-symmetric 46-bit still life (professor).
  • 1 D8_1-symmetric 56-bit still life (cloverleaf interchange).
• Oscillators:
  • 1,758 period 2 oscillators.
  • 302 period 3 oscillators.
  • 28 period 4 oscillators.
  • 10 period 5 oscillators (including Elkies' p5 and Silver's p5 above eater).
  • 7 period 6 oscillators.
  • 8 period 8 oscillators (including Achim's p8, Tim Coe's p8 and smiley).
  • 1 period 14 oscillator (tumbler).
  • 15 period 15 oscillators.
  • 2 period 24 oscillators (boring p24 and uninteresting p24).
  • 24 period 30 oscillators (including Berger's p30).
  • 5 period 46 oscillators.
• Spaceships:
  • 41 period 4 spaceships (including 37 of the 47 standard spaceship flotillae).
  • 1 period 16 spaceship (the Coe ship).
• Other patterns:
  • 27 Infinite-growth patterns.

Plots

File:Catagolue still life scatterplot.png Scatter plot of total still life counts vs. populations in B3/S23/C1 as of September 4, 2016.

File:Catagolue distinct still life scatterplot.png Scatter plot of distinct still life counts vs. populations in B3/S23/C1 as of September 4, 2016; the blue line indicates the total number of distinct still lifes per population (OEIS A019473).

Notable patterns

x = 13, y = 10, rule = B3/S23 4bo3bo$2b2obobob2o$bo3bobo3bo$o3b2ob2o3bo$obo7bobo$bo9bo2$4b2ob2o$3bob obobo$4bo3bo! #C [[ THEME 6 GRID GRIDMAJOR 0 THUMBLAUNCH AUTOSTART GPS 4 THUMBSIZE 2 ]]

Rich's p16 (click to open LifeViewer).

A variety of notable natural patterns have been submitted to Catagolue:

• The first known natural occurrence of a nonstandard spaceship was found during alpha testing of apgsearch. The soup, which produced an LWSS on HWSS 1, was submitted to the conwaylife.com forums on August 26, 2014 by Adam P. Goucher. Many other nontrivial spaceship flotillae have since been found.
• The first known natural occurrence of a puffer other than the block-laying or glider-producing switch engine, a p1152 made from two switch engines dubbed the pony express, was found in September 2015. Other objects found by apgsearch in asymmetric soups are smiley, Elkies' p5, phoenix 1, and five occurrences of the Coe ship.
• The pufferfish and 112P15 were both discovered in the ash of symmetric soups, and a copperhead emerged from a D2_+2 soup in April 2016 soon after its initial discovery by 'zdr', followed by a second one in June 2016 and a third in August 2016.
• Rich's p16 was first discovered in the ash of a symmetric soup in July 2016.

Sample soups submitted to Catagolue have also led to cheaper glider syntheses for many patterns, including tumbler, eater 2, and smiley.

Higher symmetries

In addition to asymmetric (C1) soups, Catagolue also collects census data for symmetric soups of the following types:

• C2_1, C2_2, C2_4: 180° (two-fold) rotational symmetry
• C4_1, C4_4: 90° (four-fold) rotational symmetry
• D2_+1, D2_+2: reflectional symmetry along an orthogonal line
• D2_x: reflectional symmetry along a diagonal line
• D4_+1, D4_+2, D4_+4: reflectional symmetry along two perpendicular orthogonal lines
• D4_x1, D4_x4: reflectional symmetry along two perpendicular diagonal lines
• D8_1, D8_4: reflectional symmetry along four orthogonal/diagonal through a common center

In addition, the 8x32 pseudo-symmetry is used for soups of size 8×32 instead of 16×16. The 25pct and 75pct pseudo-symmetries were used in the past to investigate soups with initial densities of 0.25 and 0.75 respectively, but they fell into disuse and are not supported by the current version of apgsearch, apgmera 3.x. Hauls for higher symmetries are subject to statistical verification before being committed, but not (with some exceptions) to peer review.

As of September 4, 2016, higher symmetries have yielded a combined total of at least 5,079,865,585,575 objects of 133,908 distinct types, including:

• Still lifes:
  • All still lifes up to 12 bits.
  • 233 of the 240 13-bit still lifes.
  • 542 of the 619 14-bit still lifes.
  • 856 of the 1353 15-bit still lifes.
  • 1 D8_1-symmetric 264-bit still life.
• Oscillators:
  • 15,681 period 2 oscillators.
  • 1,484 period 3 oscillators.
  • 270 period 4 oscillators.
  • 314 period 5 oscillators.
  • 225 period 6 oscillators.
  • 9 period 7 oscillators (including 38P7.2).
  • 30 period 8 oscillators.
  • 6 period 9 oscillators (including the worker bee and the snacker).
  • 15 period 10 oscillators.
  • 10 period 11 oscillators (including Achim's p11).
  • 1 period 12 oscillator (44P12.2).
  • 1 period 13 oscillator (Beluchenko's p13).
  • 1 period 14 oscillator (tumbler).
  • 195 period 15 oscillators.
  • 3 period 16 oscillators (Achim's p16, Achim's other p16 and Rich's p16).
  • 1 period 22 oscillator (48P22.1).
  • 9 period 24 oscillators (including the p24 shuttle).
  • 1 period 28 oscillator (Karel's p28).
  • 2 period 29 oscillators (two variants of the p29 pre-pulsar-shuttle).
  • 88 period 30 oscillators.
  • 1 period 31 oscillator (48P31).
  • 1 period 32 oscillator (68P32.1).
  • 2 period 37 oscillators (two variants of Beluchenko's p37).
  • 2 period 40 oscillators (including Beluchenko's p40).
  • 6 period 46 oscillators.
  • 1 period 51 oscillator (Beluchenko's p51).
  • 1 period 60 oscillator.
  • 4 period 120 oscillators.
  • 2 period 138 oscillators (two variants of Gabriel's p138).
• Spaceships:
  • 29 period 4 spaceships (including x66).
  • 1 period 10 spaceship (the copperhead).
  • 3 period 12 spaceship (the lightweight, middleweight and heavyweight Schick engine).
• Other patterns:
  • 261 Infinite-growth patterns.

Other rules

Main article: List of rules investigated on Catagolue

Catagolue supports arbitrary totalistic rules and semi-totalistic rules (in Hensel notation); in practice, only non-exploding rules can reasonably be investigated. More than 800 different rules have been looked at as of September 4, 2016.

Rules investigated on Catagolue include:

• B3/S12 (Flock)
• B3/S13 (LowLife)
• B3/S2-i34q (tlife)
• B3/S238 (EightLife)
• B36/S125 (2x2)
• B36/S23 (HighLife)
• B3678/S34678 (Day & Night)
• B368/S245 (Move)

Contributor engagement

Contributors to Catagolue have user pages tracking their contributions to the main Conway Life census, B3/S23/C1. In addition to providing an overview of number of objects submitted recently compared to other users, user pages list important discoveries and awarded badges.

Users are credited for discoveries if they find one of the first 20 occurrences of an interesting object: any spaceship (other than the glider), any oscillator, any linear growth pattern, or any sufficiently small (14-bit) or large still life.

The following badges are currently awarded for contributions to B3/S23/C1:

• Conchita: find a soup containing a phoenix.
• Gemini: discover a new twin bees shuttle variant.
• Gigamyriad: contribute 10¹³ objects.
• Limitless: observe a new natural infinite-growth pattern.
• Monarchist: discover a new queen bee shuttle variant.
• Sprotsmanship: contribute one third of a trillion objects to a different rule or symmetry.
• Trillionaire: contribute one trillion objects.
• Voyager: find one of the first twenty occurrences of a spaceship.

Backups

Catagolue census data for the main Conway Life census, B3/S23/C1, is backed up remotely every day at 17:29; the first such backup was made on September 24, 2015. For other symmetries or rules, a remote backup may be instigated manually by calling the backupcron endpoint, with the desired rule and symmetry. Remote backups can be viewed by appending the date to the main census URL.

Local backups of Catagolue census data may be made by calling the textcensus endpoint for the desired rule and symmetry.

Limitations

Catagolue does not accept hauls exceeding 1 MiB; additionally, hauls must contains a minimum of 10,000 soups or 250,000 objects.

Client

Although the apgsearch family of programs has bespoke support for flotillae composed of two standard spaceships in Conway's Life, it can fail to properly separate larger non-interacting groups, or groups of any size in non-Life rules.

The maximum period for spaceships and oscillators is 1,000 in apgsearch 1.x, 4,000 in apgnano (apgsearch 2.x) and 1,280 in apgmera (apgsearch 3.x); higher-period objects are classified as PATHOLOGICAL. The maximum bounding box for any spaceship, oscillator or still life is 40×40; larger objects are classified as ov_ (oversized). High-period linear-growth patterns may not be identified and instead reported as zz_LINEAR.

Also see

• Achim Flammenkamp's census
• Andrzej Okrasinski's census
• Online Life-Like CA Soup Search
• apgsearch
• apgcode

External links

• Catagolue homepage

Results

• Census for B3/S23/C1
• Statistics for B3/S23/C1

• Soup search results (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums

Client software

• apgmera (apgsearch 3.x) code repository

• apgsearch 3.1 (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
• apgnano (apgsearch 2.x) code repository

• apgsearch 2.2 (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums

• apgsearch v1.0 (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums

• Hacking apgsearch (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums

Unofficial browser extension

• Catagolue Reloaded browser extension (Opera)

• Catagolue browser extension (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums