Gliderless gun
A gliderless gun is a spaceship gun that doesn't involve gliders. The most famous example is the period-44 MWSS gun, based on a glider gun by David Buckingham (see P44 pi-heptomino hassler). Additionally, Dietrich Leithner created many gliderless spaceship guns, particularly those based on the twin bees shuttle.
There is no strict definition for what constitutes a gliderless gun. For example, solutions based on Herschel tracks may produce gliders, even though they aren't utilised in the reaction. Some increasingly strict conditions might include:
- a synthesis of the output spaceship that is not a form of glider synthesis
- a core gun engine that does not output gliders
- the absence of any reactions from the gun that would output gliders
- the absence of a glider-shaped cluster at any point in the operation of the gun
- the absence of a glider-shaped polyplet at any point in the operation of the gun
Below is a LWSS gun that fits the first four of the above criteria. A glider-shaped polyplet is visible in the T=0 form of the gun, and similar regions can be found in other phases. Many more regions can be found that, if isolated, would converge to a glider within a few ticks. But since this isolation never occurs in the actual evolution of the pattern, the gun counts as gliderless by any reasonable definition of the term.
| An example of a gliderless LWSS gun based on Tanner's p46 (click above to open LifeViewer) RLE: here Plaintext: here |
External links
- Gliderless at the Life Lexicon