Rectifier
Rectifier | |||||||||
View static image | |||||||||
Pattern type | Stable reflector | ||||||||
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Number of cells | 59 | ||||||||
Bounding box | 41 × 33 | ||||||||
Angle | 180° | ||||||||
Repeat time | 106 | ||||||||
Discovered by | Adam P. Goucher | ||||||||
Year of discovery | 2009 | ||||||||
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The rectifier is a stable 180° glider reflector made up of two eater 1s, a block, a beehive, and an eater 3. The normal tub-stabilised eater 3 can be used here to reduce the population, but the snake-stabilised eater 3 has a smaller bounding box. The rectifier is notable for its recovery time of 106 generations and small number of catalysts. It can replace the boojum reflector in a large number of instances, although in some cases it cannot fit into the space provided due to the transparency of the beehive. It has several advantages over the boojum reflector:
- it has a much lower recovery time, allowing certain guns to be compacted;
- its passive bounding box is slightly smaller, so it can further compact many glider guns;
- its output path is free of catalysts, enabling it to be used as a merge device.
The transparent beehive reaction was discovered by Paul Callahan in 1996.
Rectifier reflecting a p106 glider stream, shown with highlighted reaction envelope. A second rectifier is present outside the frame, forming a loop with five gliders (click above to open LifeViewer) RLE: here Plaintext: here |
Gallery
SKOPs
Rectifier loops comprise the majority of the smallest known oscillators of a certain period for high periods. Here is a list of them up to period 200:
Period | Number of gliders | Catagolue page | Minimum population |
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109 | 10 | link | 156 |
121 | 10 | link | 156 |
131 | 6 | link | 136 |
137 | 2 | link | 116 |
139 | 6 | link | 136 |
149 | 2 | link | 116 |
151 | 6 | link | 136 |
153 | 2 | link | 116 |
157 | 2 | link | 116 |
161 | 2 | link | 116 |
163 | 6 | link | 136 |
167 | 6 | link | 136 |
169 | 2 | link | 116 |
173 | 2 | link | 116 |
178 | 5 | link | 148 |
179 | 6 | link | 136 |
181 | 2 | link | 116 |
183 | 6 | link | 136 |
191 | 6 | link | 136 |
193 | 2 | link | 116 |
194 | 5 | link | 137 |
197 | 2 | link | 116 |
Most prime-period SKOPs are rectifier loops, because there's no currently known lower-population way to close a loop using only stable circuitry.
See also
List of smallest-population known oscillators for periods up to 2048, tracked by the Skopje project
External links
- New stable 180° glider reflector at Game of Life News. Posted by Dave Greene on May 30, 2009.
- Rectifier at the Life Lexicon
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