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A New Glider Found For Conway's Game of Life

Posted by timothy on from the also-a-new-number-between-11-and-12 dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Conway's Game of Life is now forty two years old, but it continues to inspire as well as being the basis of an actively researched field, with computer scientists now announcing they have found a new form of the famous 'glider' pattern (once suggested by Eric S Raymond as the insignia of computer hackers) that runs over a so-called Penrose universe."

1 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. Re:As expected... by sFurbo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Gliders are commonplace on repeating grids. According to TFA (and this makes sense), it was thought that they could not be made on non-repeating grids. After all, which direction should it follow? How to make sure it can even exist in the place it will move to?

    However, I feel that by allowing more types of tiles, it should be clear that it was possible. For example, with four types of cells, you could have
    "front of glider" (becomes "back of glider")
    "back of glider" (becomes "not glider")
    "side of glider" to keep the rest in check (keeps status unless in contact with "back of glider", when it becomes "not glider")
    "not glider" (becomes "side of glider" if in contact with one "side of glider" and one "front of glider", becomes "front of glider" if in contact with two "side of glider" and no "back of glider")

    This seems to be what they have done.