middleweight spaceship

plural middleweight spaceships

1. cellular automataA particular orthogonal spaceship in Conway's Game of Life, and the second smallest such example.

   The usual non-glider suspects from Conway's Life (lightweight, middleweight, and heavyweight spaceships) all fail here due to central 7-neighbor OFF cells.

   2008 May 31, Dave Greene, “Life: B37/S23 - A Chaotic Universe.”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet)

   2 more examples

   To begin with and to be complete, I will list the original spaceships. These are the glider, the lightweight spaceship (LWSS), middleweight spaceship (MWSS), and the heavyweight spaceship (HWSS). These were all found very soon after Life was invented by Conway.

   1992 August 13, David Bell, “Spaceships in Conway's Life (Part 1)”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet)

   The trailing middleweight spaceships convert the spark into a pair of pi-heptominos, which start the line of blinkers burning again, while leaving behind a pair of blocks.

   1996 December 16, Dean Hickerson, “What is his name ?”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet)