lexicon.txt

成功再现康韦的生命游戏。这是人工生命方法的缘起之作

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:boat on boat: = {boat-tie}

:boat-ship-tie: = {ship tie boat}

:boatstretcher:  Any {wickstretcher} that stretches a boat.  The first
   one was found by Hartmut Holzwart in June 1993.  The following
   example is by Noam Elkies (February 1996) and uses Tim Coe's {swan}.
   Note that in any boatstretcher the point of the boat can be removed
   to get a tubstretcher.
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:boat-tie: (p1)  The name is a pun on "bow tie".
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:bookend:  The following {induction coil}.  It is generation 1 of
   {century}.
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:bookends: (p1)
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:boss: (p4)  Found by Dave Buckingham, 1972.
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:bottle: (p8)  Found by Achim Flammenkamp in August 1994.  The name is
   a back-formation from {ship in a bottle}.
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:bounding box:  The smallest rectangular array of cells that contains
   the whole of a given pattern.  For {oscillator}s and {gun}s this
   usually is meant to include all phases of the pattern, but excludes,
   in the case of guns, the outgoing stream(s).

:bow tie: = {boat-tie}

:brain: (c/3 orthogonally, p3)  Found by David Bell, May 1992.
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:breeder:  Any pattern whose {population} grows at a quadratic rate,
   although it is usual to exclude {spacefiller}s.  It is easy to see
   that this is the fastest possible growth rate.
     The term is also sometimes used to mean specifically the breeder
   created by Bill Gosper's group at MIT, which was the first known
   pattern exhibiting superlinear growth.
     There are four basic types of breeder, known as MMM, MMS, MSM and
   SMM (where M=moving and S=stationary).  Typically an MMM breeder is a
   {rake} {puffer}, an MMS breeder is a puffer producing puffers which
   produce stationary objects ({still life}s and/or {oscillator}s),
   an MSM breeder is a {gun} puffer and an SMM breeder is a rake gun.
   There are, however, less obvious variants of these types.  The
   original breeder was of type MSM (a p64 puffer puffing p30 glider
   guns).
     The known breeder with the smallest initial population is the
   {metacatacryst}.

:bridge:  A term used in naming certain {still life}s (and the {stator}
   part of certain {oscillator}s).  It indicates that the object
   consists of two smaller objects joined edge to edge, as in
   {snake bridge snake}.

:broth: = {soup}

:BTC: = {billiard table configuration}

:B track:  A {track} for {B-heptomino}es.  The term is more-or-less
   synonymous with {Herschel track}, since a B-heptomino becomes a
   Herschel plus a block in twenty generations.

:buckaroo:  A {queen bee shuttle} stabilized at one end by an eater
   in such a way that it can turn a glider, as shown below.  This was
   found by Dave Buckingham in the 1970s.  The name is due to Bill
   Gosper.
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:bullet heptomino:  Generation 1 of the {T-tetromino}.
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:bun:  The following {induction coil}.  By itself this is a common
   {predecessor} of the {honey farm}.  See also {cis-mirrored R-bee}.
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:bunnies: (stabilizes at time 17332)  This is a {parent} of {rabbits}
   and was found independently by Robert Wainwright and Andrew
   Trevorrow.
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:burloaf: = {loaf}

:burloaferimeter: (p7)  Found by Dave Buckingham in 1972.  See also
   {airforce}.
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:bushing:  That part of the {stator} of an {oscillator} which is
   adjacent to the {rotor}.  Compare {casing}.

:butterfly:  The following pattern, or the formation of two beehives
   that it evolves into after 33 generations.  (Compare {teardrop},
   where the beehives are five cells closer together.)
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:by flops: (p2)  Found by Robert Wainwright.
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:c: = {speed of light}

:CA: = {cellular automaton}

:caber tosser:  Any pattern whose {population} is asymptotic to c.log(t)
   for some constant c, and which contains a {glider} (or other
   {spaceship}) bouncing between a slower receding spaceship and a
   fixed {reflector} which emits a spaceship (in addition to the
   reflected one) whenever the bouncing spaceship hits it.
     As the receding spaceship gets further away the bouncing spaceship
   takes longer to complete each cycle, and so the extra spaceships
   emitted by the reflector are produced at increasingly large
   intervals.  More precisely, if v is the speed of the bouncing
   spaceship and u the speed of the receding spaceship, then each
   interval is (v+u)/(v-u) times as long as the previous one.  The
   population at time t is therefore n.log(t)/log((v+u)/(v-u))+O(1),
   where n is the population of one of the extra spaceships (assumed
   constant).
     The first caber tosser was built by Dean Hickerson in August 1994.

:Cambridge pulsar CP 48-56-72: = {pulsar}  (The numbers refer to
   the populations of the three phases.  The Life pulsar was indeed
   discovered at Cambridge, like the first real pulsar a few years
   earlier.)

:Canada goose: (c/4 diagonally, p4)  Found by Jason Summers, January
   1999.  It consists of a {glider} plus a {tagalong}.
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   At the time of its discovery the Canada goose was the smallest known
   diagonal {spaceship} other than the glider, but this record has since
   been beaten, first by the second spaceship shown under {Orion}, and
   more recently by the following 25-cell spaceship (Jason Summers,
   September 2000):
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:candelabra: (p3)  By Charles Trawick.  See also the note under {cap}.
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:candlefrobra: (p3)  Found by Robert Wainwright in November 1984.
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   The following diagram shows that a pair of these can act in some ways
   like {killer toads}.  See also {snacker}.
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:canoe: (p1)
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:cap:  The following {induction coil}.  It can also be easily be
   stabilized to form a p3 oscillator - see {candelabra} for a slight
   variation on this.
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:carnival shuttle: (p12)  Found by Robert Wainwright in September 1984
   (using {MW emulator}s at the end, rather than {monogram}s).
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:carrier: = {aircraft carrier}

:casing:  That part of the {stator} of an {oscillator} which is not
   adjacent to the {rotor}.  Compare {bushing}.

:catacryst:  A 58-cell quadratic growth pattern found by Nick Gotts
   in April 2000.  This was formerly the smallest known pattern with
   superlinear growth, but has since been superceded by the related
   {metacatacryst}.  The catacryst consists of three {ark}s plus a
   glider-producing {switch engine}.  It produces a block-laying switch
   engine every 47616 generations.  Each block-laying switch engine has
   only a finite life, but the length of this life increases linearly
   with each new switch engine, so that the pattern overall grows
   quadratically, as an unusual type of MMS {breeder}.

:catalyst:  An object that participates in a reaction but emerges from
   it unharmed.  The term is mostly applied to {still life}s, but can
   also be used of {oscillator}s, {spaceship}s, etc.  The still lifes
   and oscillators which form a {conduit} are examples of catalysts.

:caterer: (p3)  Found by Dean Hickerson, August 1989.  Compare
   with {jam}.  In terms of its minimum {population} of 12 this is
   the smallest p3 {oscillator}.  See also {double caterer} and
   {triple caterer}.
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   More generally, any oscillator which serves up a {bit} in the
   same manner may be referred to as a ceterer.

:Catherine wheel: = {pinwheel}

:cauldron: (p8)  Found in 1971 independently by Don Woods and Robert
   Wainwright.  Compare with {Hertz oscillator}.
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:cavity: (p2)
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:cell:  The fundamental unit of space in the Life universe.  The term is
   often used to mean a live cell - the sense is usually clear from the
   context.

:cellular automaton:  A certain class of mathematical objects of which
   {Life} is an example.  A cellular automaton consists of a number of
   things.  First there is a positive integer n which is the dimension
   of the cellular automaton.  Then there is a finite set of states S,
   with at least two members.  A state for the whole cellular automaton
   is obtained by assigning an element of S to each point of the
   n-dimensional lattice Z^n (where Z is the set of all integers).
   The points of Z^n are usually called cells.  The cellular automaton
   also has the concept of a neighbourhood.  The neighbourhood N of the
   origin is some finite (nonempty) subset of Z^n.  The neighbourhood
   of any other cell is obtained in the obvious way by translating that
   of the origin.  Finally there is a transition rule, which is a
   function from S^N to S (that is to say, for each possible state of
   the neighbourhood the transition rule specifies some cell state).
   The state of the cellular automaton evolves in discrete time, with
   the state of each cell at time t+1 being determined by the state
   of its neighbourhood at time t, in accordance with the transition
   rule.
     There are some variations on the above definition.  It is common
   to require that there be a quiescent state, that is, a state such
   that if the whole universe is in that state at generation 0 then it
   will remain so in generation 1.  (In Life the OFF state is quiescent,
   but the ON state is not.)  Other variations allow spaces other than
   Z^n, neighbourhoods that vary over space and/or time, probabilistic
   or other non-deterministic transistion rules, etc.
     It is common for the neighbourhood of a cell to be the 3x...x3
   (hyper)cube centred on that cell.  (This includes those cases
   where the neighbourhood might more naturally be thought of as a
   subset of this cube.)   This is known as the Moore neighbourhood.

:centinal: (p100)  Found by Bill Gosper.  This combines the mechanisms
   of the p46 and p54 shuttles (see {twin bees shuttle} and
   {p54 shuttle}).
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