Eli5: What is a spaceship in John Conway game of life?
In: Mathematics
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A spaceship is a pattern of dots that appears to “move” across the grid on successive ticks. It’s not really part of the game, in that there are bo rules to describe these objects, and, indeed, every tick involves different dots from the last tick. And yet, you can spot them pretty easily obce you know what to look for. The simplest example is the glider, which moves diagonally.
A spaceship is a pattern that will propagate in a certain direction by cycling through a variety of different patterns back to its original pattern but in a new location.
Most travel orthogonally or diagonally (equal horizontal and vertical movement), however more recently (since 2010) some have been found that travel in oblique directions as well.
A spaceship is a name for a pattern that self-perpetuates across space. That is, if there is a configuration of live cells at time T at coordinates (x,y), then, in the absence of any other live cells interfering with it, the same configuration will be present at time T+N at coordinates (x+a,y+b) for some N > 0, and a,b >= 0 (with at least one greater than zero). Some spaceships only move in x or y coordinates, some move diagonally.
This is similar to be distinct from simpler patterns such as stable structures where the same pattern is present at the same coordinates without ever moving or changing, or oscillators which will end up at the same spot periodically, shifting between multiplier phases before looping back.
(Interestingly, from a certain perspective photons in the real world act like Conway spaceships in the electromagnetic spectrum)
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