puffer train

plural puffer trains

1. cellular automataA puffer.

   The commonest use of sparks from these spaceships is to perturb an "engine" to produce puffer trains, or to modify stationary objects when the spaceships pass by.

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

   2 more examples

   The second has speed c/2, period 2. This one also works in B3/S035; the first is no longer a spaceship but a minimalist puffer train, leaving behind a trail of isolated cells!

   1995 November 12, Rich Holmes, “Totalistic spaceships”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet)

   I stuck the rule and seed into Golly, and after a few tens of thousands of generations, stuck another seed in such that the arms of gliders spewed by the two blobs would intersect, and without any more planning than that, it constructed a puffer train, that survived ten or twelve major pattern replications despite the sleet of gliders colliding with it, before it finally got clobbered hard enough to disrupt its progress.

   2007 June 3, Kent Dolan, “A "new" Conway Life experience.”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet)