Game of Life Guns: Patterns That Create Infinite Streams

Guns are among the most important patterns in Conway's Game of Life - they create infinite streams of spaceships or other objects. Understanding guns opens the door to complex constructions and computations.

The Historic First: Gosper Glider Gun

The Gosper Glider Gun was discovered in 1970 by Bill Gosper's team at MIT. This period-30 pattern creates a new glider every 30 generations, proving that finite patterns could exhibit unlimited growth.

Key Properties:

• Period: 30 generations
• Output: One glider per period
• Size: 36×9 bounding box
• Historical significance: Won $50 prize from John Conway

Modern Gun Discoveries

Period 46 Guns: The New Gun 1 was the second basic gun period discovered, leading to many derivatives.

High-Period Guns: The Simkin Glider Gun (period 120) and Gunstar (period 144) demonstrate that guns can have much longer periods.

Multi-barrel Guns: Patterns like Gunstar fire multiple gliders per period, increasing their output rate.

Spaceship Guns

Beyond glider guns, researchers have created guns for other spaceships:

LWSS Guns: Fire lightweight spaceships Dart Guns: Create Dart spaceships
Copperhead Guns: Emit Copperhead spaceships

Gun Components and Technology

Oscillator-based guns: Use the sparks from oscillators like the Queen Bee Shuttle

Collision-based guns: Create spaceships through precisely timed glider collisions

Herschel guns: Use Herschel conduits to create complex timing patterns

Applications of Guns

Logic circuits: Guns provide the clock signals for computational constructions

Breeders: Multiple guns can create quadratic growth patterns

Universal constructors: Advanced projects use gun arrays for programmable construction

Building Your Own Guns

Gun construction typically involves:

1. Finding a suitable collision or reaction
2. Engineering the timing with oscillators
3. Optimizing the period and output rate
4. Adding cleanup mechanisms for debris