User:Macbi/POTY2022 Nominations

A table to collect nominations for POTY 2022. Anyone please feel free to contribute missing entries, but discuss in the thread before changing an existing entry. Red text in versions before 5/29/2023 indicated entries that I (Macbi) wanted to check or improve. Editing will probably become irrelevant when a POTY 2022 voting thread is created.

	Name (with link)	Authors	Description
1	74P34	Mitchell Riley	The first known non-trivial oscillator with period 34.
2	Raucci's p38	David Raucci, Jason Summers, cvojan	The first known oscillator with period 38, made by adding cvojan's traffic stop as fenceposts for a known wick by Jason Summers.
3	Unsynthable and limited-ancestor objects	Ilkka Törmä and Ville Salo	Discoveries include an unsynthesizable still life and unsynthesizable p2 oscillator, both based on "self-forcing" agars, as well as a generalized solution to the grandfather problem (patterns that have n-tick predecessors but no (n+1)-tick predecessors). The beginning of this series of discoveries was "American Dream", a pattern with finite population which has an infinite-population predecessor but no finite-population predecessor.
4	record lifespan switch-engine-based methuselahs	yaochen2, dani, gravity	This series of patterns (71903M, 71905M and 4764364M, 13629876M, and 126932978M) with relatively small bounding boxes and initial populations, set several new records for methuselah longevity. Ordinarily patterns that include switch-engine outputs will produce unbounded linear growth and are not counted in the "methuselah" category, but these examples generate a lucky retrograde glider that shuts down the receding switch engines after thousands or millions of generations.
5	Explicit 15-glider Reverse Caber-Tosser	Daniel Vargas, Adam P. Goucher, Pavel Grankovskiy, Simon Ekström, Dave Greene, AlbertArmStain, Oscar Cunningham, Chris Cain, dani, and Goldtiger997	A concrete construction demonstrating that any glider synthesis can be reduced to use just 15 gliders. The number of gliders was also reduced from its previous value of 17.
6	five new p23 engines	Nico Brown (3), James Pascua (1), Mitchell Riley (1)	At the end of 2021, only one period-23 oscillator was known, excluding variants: David Hilbert. As of the end of 2022, there are six.
7	The Great Oscillator Discovery Project	David Raucci, Mitchell Riley, Luke Kiernan, iNoMed, et al.	This project continued 2022's increased focus on the discovery of new oscillators, partly to work toward filling in the remaining unknown oscillator periods to finally prove Life to be omniperiodic. Several new automated and semi-automated search techniques were introduced, resulting in a flood of new discoveries. For example, the introduction of symmetric CatForce has led to new oscillators of approximately 112 periods, including fifteen primes above 13.
8	Engineered diehard	Pavel Grankovskiy, toroidalet, Tanner Jacobi	A pattern that starts in a bounding box of area 9990, and yet lives for more than 10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10 generations before dying out completely.
9	Quartermax	Keith Amling, Hartmut Holzwart and Jason Summers	A long-sought pattern that fills one quarter of the Life plane with zebra stripes.
10	Gliderless GGG breeder	Wojciech Kęsy	A p48 puffer for Gosper glider guns that produces its output in a very unconventional way, with no glider collisions.
11	New quadratic growth records	dani, Luka Okanishi and Rocknlol	The smallest known quadratic growth patterns, in terms of population (dani), number of gliders (dani), and bounding box (dani, AbhpzTa and Rocknlol) --20-cell quadratic growth, 6G quadratic growth, 23×13 quadratic growth.
12	Self-synthesizing glide-reflecting loopship	Goldtiger997	A pattern made entirely of gliders that synthesises a reflected and translated copy of itself. Thus it makes an orthogonal spaceship travelling at a speed of 30985960c/144171206.
13	Speed Orthogonoid	Goldtiger997	An adjustable spaceship capable at travelling orthogonally at any speed less than c/2.
14	Speed Orthogonal Loopship	Goldtiger997	A pattern made entirely of XWSSes that synthesises a reflected and translated copy of itself. It travels orthogonally and is adjustable so that its speed can become arbitrarily close to c/2. Its population is much less than that of the Speed Orthogonoid.
15	Nico Brown's strictly volatile oscillators	Nico Brown	Nico Brown created a script that can create huge strictly volatile oscillators of any period 943+ except 944. Note that this entry does not include the strictly volatile p86, which coincidentally has Nico Brown as a co-discoverer.
16	Taco	Frank Everdij	The third known elementary c/7 orthogonal spaceship.
17	new honeyfarm catalysts, including chucklebait	Mitchell Riley, Luke Kiernan	Catalysts which perform new perturbations on honey farms. In particular, the chucklebait, which has found considerable use in honey farm hasslers of various periods.
18	component for adding a "crotchet" to a c/3 spaceship	Goldtiger997	This is a new synthesis component that can repeatably extend a "waltz" section of c/3 orthogonal spaceship, allowing for the first known infinite series of synthesizable c/3 spaceships.
19	small Max predecessors	Rocknlol, iNoMed	After an intermediate 127-cell, 27 × 23 new record set by iNoMed, Rocknlol found two different record predecessors of a Max spacefiller variant by population and bounding box of 112 cells and 21 × 21, respectively.
20	p86 R-pentomino hassler	Nico Brown, iNoMed	The discovery of this oscillator added 86 to a fairly short list, making it the fourteenth period where a strictly volatile oscillator is known that doesn't make use of self-constructing circuitry.
21	New spaceship syntheses	Goldtiger997, Mark Niemiec, iNoMed, Tanner Jacobi, pipsqueek, Connor Steppie	Glider construction recipes were discovered for Orion 2, 33P4H1V1, 70P5H2V0, 58P8H4V0, 30P3H1V0, 29P3H1V0, brain, 66P5H2V0, and 37P4H1V1, as well as the unbounded number of c/3 spaceships made possible by #18 above.
22	New Reflector Periods	vivi, iNoMed, Matthias Merzenich, David Raucci, Mitchell Riley, MAP bot, Nico Brown, Tanner Jacobi, Noam Elkies	90° reflectors for the previously unsolved periods of 23, 34, and 38.
23	New p24 glider gun	cvojan, vivi, James Pascua	A new second-smallest glider gun after the Gosper glider gun, fitting in a 20 × 20 bounding box.
24	Lisp in Life	woodrush (Hikaru Ikuta)	A Lisp interpreter implemented in Conway’s Game of Life, using technology similar to the Quest for Tetris project. This is the first implementation of a standardized high-level programming language inside Conway’s Game of Life.
25	Completion of the 21-bit strict still life synthesis project, and completion of the 20-bit pseudo still life synthesis project	Alex Greason, May13, wwei47, iNoMed, Daniel Vargas, Jeremy Tan, Adam P. Goucher, HotWheels9232, Carson Cheng, Goldtiger997, Tanner Jacobi	Glider syntheses for all 21-bit strict still lifes and all 20-bit psuedo-still lifes.
26	New stable conduits and converters	Mitchell Riley, Simon Ekström, Evin, Entity Valkyrie 2, Tanner Jacobi, qqd	Several new stable conduits and converters, including Speed Tunnel, HRx65R, a small stable 180° reflector (the "Jubjub reflector"), F149, Lx129, HL224H, RSE14T117, and NW-2T16.
27	p8 glider reflector	Tanner Jacobi	A period-8 180° glider reflector that works in every phase and hence can be used as if it were stable.
28	Soup search discoveries from distributed computing projects	Darren Li / Charity Engine, Open Science Grid	Thanks to the efforts of Darren Li, in 2022 Catagolue started receiving a much larger number of distributed-computing search results, especially for symmetric soups. This contributed to a large number of new discoveries; see the Charity Engine and Open Science Grid articles for examples.
29	New gun periods	David Raucci, iNoMed, Nico Brown, Mitchell Riley, goldenratio, Luke Kiernan, Gustone, and cvojan	Guns of five previously unsolved periods: 25, 27, 34, 37, and 43.
30	New greyships	Hartmut Holzwart, Keith Amling	A variety of new greyships, many of which were found with Keith Amling’s new program, LLSSS.
31	New c/2 patterns from soup searches	mystical, Charity Engine and wwei47	Ships, puffers and rake found from 'unnatural' soup searches. The ship 58P8H4V0 and the p28 block puffer were found in symmetric soups; the ship 35P12H6V0, the p112 puffer and p12 rake were found in soups with the leading edge of space ships already present.
32	232P7H3V0	Keith Amling	A new record for the smallest 3c/7 spaceship.