Collection of wicks for Conway's Game of Life Compiled by Jason Summers http://pobox.com/~jason1/life/ A "wick" is an infinite linearly repeating oscillator. A "fencepost" is an object that can stabilize one end of a wick. Most of the wicks in this collection have no known fenceposts, so the patterns will blow up pretty quickly. If a fencepost is known, it is usually included with the pattern. Uninteresting fenceposts for some of the high period wicks can be built by firing gliders at the ends -- some of these would be very large, and are not included. The period of a wick can be expressed in the form A/B, where A is the period, and A/B (divided out) is the number of generations it takes for a congruent pattern to appear (the same pattern but possibly shifted and/or flipped). If A=B, the wick is called a "barber pole". Wicks where B=1 are usually the most interesting, since they are typically the easiest to stabilize. This collection does not attempt to include every known wick. In fact, an infinite number are known. Consider the following wicks: **..**..**..** **..**.**..**.**. **..**..**..**..**.. **..**..**..** **..**.**..**.**. **..**..**..**..**.. .............. ................. .................... ************** ***************** ******************** .............. ................. .................... .***..***..*** .****..****..**** .*****..*****..***** **...**...**.. **....**....**... **.....**.....**.... .***..***..*** .****..****..**** .*****..*****..***** .............. ................. .................... ************** ***************** ******************** .............. ................. .................... **..**..**..** **..**.**..**.**. **..**..**..**..**.. **..**..**..** **..**.**..**.**. **..**..**..**..**.. Period 5/5 Period 6/6 Period 7/7 The series can be continued to produce a wick of any desired period. Any spaceship "tagalong" that can be extended in the direction of the spaceship's movement also constitutes a wick. For example: .*.........*.........* **......****......**** *.....***.*.....***.*. *....**...*....**...*. **...*....**...*....** .***.*.....***.*.....* ...****......****..... ......*.........*..... Period 20/10 Wicks of this type are usually not include in this collection. Also not included are: * wicks that have been made finite, and are more interesting when considered to be an oscillator than a wick * wicks of period 3 or less Most of the wicks in this collection were found independently by me, using a random torus search program. However, a substantial fraction of them were discovered by other people. I have not gone to much effort to determine and give credit to the first discoverer. In some cases that would be almost impossible anyway, since many of these wicks would not have been considered interesting enough to make public.