Professor is a 46-bit still life consisting of two large islands (resembling a long⁴ clips) partially stabilizing each other and further stabilized by two blocks acting as induction coils.
The cis-mirrored variant of this still life occured naturally from an asymmetricsoup on July 9, 2016,[1] in a haul submitted to Catagolue by Adam P. Goucher, making it tied for the second largest still life in terms of cell population to have occurred naturally (its title as the largest was taken in August 2016 by the 56-cell cloverleaf interchange, and its second-place position was later tied by an inflected version of itself which also has 46 cells in February 2019[2]).
Variants
A number of variants are possible, depending on the alignment of the two halves and the position of the blocks:
