- For the class of patterns sometimes called ships, see spaceship.
Ship is a 6-bit still life. It was discovered by the JHC group in 1970.[1] It is the smallest pattern that is a still life under the standard Life rules but not in HighLife.
Adding one cell to the corner of the ship will turn it into a fleet. Removing one of the corner cells results in a boat, while removing both results in a tub. Like the tub and the boat, it is infinitely extensible (see long ship).
Ship can act as an eater, eating one half of a traffic light.
The ship is the seventh most common still life in Achim Flammenkamp's census, being less common than pond and more common than long boat.[2] It is also the seventh most common object on Adam P. Goucher's Catagolue. It is the second most common 6-bit still life, being less common than the beehive but more common than the barge.[3] It is the most common object in Catagolue for which there is no 2-glider synthesis.
The ship is about 4.5 times as common in Catagolue than in Achim Flammenkamp's census; it is more common than the tub and the pond in the former but not the latter. The reason for this huge discrepancy is because Catagolue's soups are 16×16 with empty space surrounding it, and a Herschel leaving the active region and going into the empty space produces a ship. In comparison, Achim Flammenkamp's census is on a large torus, which is effectively an infinite region, so there is no empty space for a Herschel to complete its sequence, and it is likely to crash into something first.
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