Wing is a common evolutionary sequence that stabilizes at generation 104 as a block and a glider. Its most common grandparent is traditionally referred to as block and glider, which is composed of two pre-blocks and has a lifespan of 106 generations. That pattern has a six-cell parent called nine, resembling an eater 1 with one tail cell missing.
Nine can also be seen as a pre-block connected to a three-cell-long line.
Tails can often be replaced with nines. When the resulting still life is able to perform a eater 1 catalysis using the added nine, the resulting still life is referred to as being "hungry".
Like other common evolutionary sequences, wings can be hassled in various ways, such as in the p25 wing and block hassler[note 1][note 2] and p128 wing shuttle.
Some oscillators, even if they're not wing hasslers, produce wings, such as Charity's p16, Beluchenko's other p37, and one of the p43 honey farm hasslers. Generation 7 of wing produces dot sparks, which can be useful, as it makes the oscillator a sparker.
In conduits
A number of conduits have been found to produce or accept a wing (abbreviated W) with reasonable clearance, such as PF35W, a wing-to-LWSS converter and WFx46H. A WSW-3 conduit[note 3] can be made by eating the extra block using a block or eater 1.
Gallery
x = 4, y = 3, rule = B3/S23
2o$obo$2b2o!
#C [[ THUMBSIZE 2 THEME 6 GRID GRIDMAJOR 0 SUPPRESS THUMBLAUNCH ]]
#C [[ ZOOM 16 Y -4 AUTOSTART GPS 4 PAUSE 2 T 32 PAUSE 2 T 35 PAUSE 2 LOOP 36 ]]
Block and glider reappears 32 generations later shifted 3 cells right and 7 cells up only to be turned into a B-heptomino 3 generations later (click above to open LifeViewer) RLE:herePlaintext:here
↑An alternative version of this oscillator is shown in jslife with a different method of stabilization.[1]Nicolay Beluchenko found the simpler stabilization with two fumaroles later on.[2] However, it is unknown when or by whom this reaction was found.[3]