glider gun

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English[edit]

A Gosper glider gun firing gliders.
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Noun[edit]

glider gun (plural glider guns)

  1. (cellular automata) In the Game of Life, any pattern that "fires" out gliders.
    • 1989 October 31, Scott Huddleston, “life: glider guns”, in comp.theory.cell-automata[1] (Usenet):
      But in one position and phase of a 2-bee shuttle (the standard glider gun), the debris evolves into a glider and sails away before the bees return.
    • 1998, M. Delorme, Jacques Mazoyer, Cellular automata: a parallel model, page 64:
      Alas this transformation by itself increases traversal length of the circuit because these new glider guns are much larger.
    • 2005 January 2, Kent Dolan, “Re: Smaller UTM than Rule110”, in comp.theory.cell-automata[2] (Usenet):
      In particular, since those two patterns extend their repetitions endlessly to the left and right, there is no need for a "glider gun" to provide a continuous supply of new patterns, as you suggest.