life: glider guns

[asfk;djl]

Has anyone heard any stories of how Gosper came upon the glider gun?

[Do you by chance read this group William?]

Any references, recountings or speculations would be greatly appreciated.

--
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| Todd S. Stock | to...@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov | HONK if you're from CYBERSPACE! |
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[Scott Huddleston]

In article <27...@einstein.ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov> to...@ptolemy.UUCP () writes:
>Has anyone heard any stories of how Gosper came upon the glider gun?

>Any references, recountings or speculations would be greatly appreciated.

I'll venture a reasoned speculation that the glider gun was discovered
in 3 steps.

First, the queen bee was found (that's the arrowhead-shaped moving
part, of which 2 are in the standard glider gun). The queen bee
arises fairly often in random fields and is pretty easy to spot,
so it's a reasonable guess she was discovered in random fields.

Second, shuttles were constructed from the queen bee. (Shuttles have
one or more parts, such a queen bees, moving in a back and forth
periodic motion). The queen bee in isolation isn't periodic, because
she leaves some debris when she turns around and is destroyed by
the debris on her next pass. But there are many queen bee configurations
in which the debris is neutralized, including placement of a block or
eater near the bee's turnaround point, or placing two queen bees
in a line or at right angles in various positions and phases.

In most queen bee shuttles, turnaround debris neutralizes by
evaporationg. 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. It's a good guess the standard gun was found
while methodically investigating 2-bee shuttle configurations.
--
Scott Huddleston
testing the semantics of the ".signature" file