#C crystal-cathedral-09-novelty.rle
#C Bill Gosper, 18 May 2021
#C
#C One of Bill Gosper's recent Golly-based "novelty experiments".
#C
#C This is rendered in LifeSuper rather than plain Life, to allow the
#C incoming glider streams that form the kaleidoscopic pattern in
#C the center to be a different color from the settled ash. To 
#C switch back to two-state Life hit Alt+J (Option+J on a Mac).
#C
#C The pattern's final fate is only determined after more than
#C 314 million generations.  Until that time, the pairs of
#C backward glider streams from the receding arks
#C (https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Ark)
#C repeatedly drill through sections of the arks' ash clouds,
#C then gradually build up crystal structures
#C (https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Crystal)
#C until the crystal comes into contact with another structure
#C and restarts the production of chaotic ash.
#C
#C The two parallel streams of gliders from each corner do a fairly
#C good job of keeping each other chaotic.  Each stream by itself
#C has a tendency to drill through debris, on average.  But in this
#C case, if one stream drills deeper than the other, it tends to
#C keep getting interrupted by explosions from the other stream.
#C
#C This means that there seems to be a tendency to build up ash.
#C These eightfold glider-stream novelty experiments quite often
#C end with one of a few stabilization mechanisms at the center.
#C But fairly early on in this pattern's evolution, the two streams
#C stop being able to drill through to meet their partner streams.
#C
#C At around 63 million ticks, the pattern appears to have stabilized:
#C it develops a spatial periodicity of 2,688 cells and temporal
#C periodicity 6,151,680 ticks.  By T = 80,000,000, it has repeated
#C the same ash pattern three times.
#C
#C However, the novelty story is not over yet! There's a very subtle
#C mechanism involving a glider hitting the east/west "spine" of
#C the ash pattern, every six million ticks, bouncing back another
#C glider toward the diagonals.  If that glider doesn't arrive
#C soon enough, a key change is not made in the active region of
#C the repeating ash pattern.  The key glider takes longer on each
#C cycle to travel from the spine to the diagonal. Eventually it
#C arrives just a little too late, and novelty generation resumes.
#C
#C At T = 313,822,924, a deadly collision occurs on the streams
#C closest to the east and west spines. A glider hits a 
#C loaf/welded-hat combination.
#C
#C At T = 313,823,095, a Baneful Beacon appears, which performs a
#C boat-bit catch of the rest of that stream as soon as the
#C stream drills through to it.
#C
#C At T = 314,098,160, in a stunning turn of events, the other stream
#C rescues the trapped stream by destroying the beacon.
#C (In fact a potential rescue happened sooner than that, since
#C the other stream interrupted the trapped stream higher up; the
#C beacon wasn't catching anything any more at that point, though
#C it was still dangerously placed and could have started up again
#C whenever the stream drilled through, unless a lucky drilling
#C explosion destroyed it.)
#C
#C At T = 314,339,784, a glider on the lanes closest to the N/S spine
#C hits a simple TL+ship combination, and makes a boat-bit-catching
#C eater (bo$2bo6b2o$3o5bobo$8b2o2$4b3o2$2bo5bo$2bo5bo$2bo5bo2$4b3o!)
#C
#C At T = 318,134,782, a new beacon appears on the streams closest to
#C the E/W axis. The streams closest to the N/S axis then have a
#C brief chance to save the day, but...
#C
#C At T = 318,140,758, they clear their final bit of debris. Future
#C gliders in those streams sail merrily to meet their fate on the
#C patiently waiting boat-bit-catching eater, which is sitting
#C safely in the bottom of a very long open drill hole, like a
#C very well-fed ant lion.
x = 144, y = 1160, rule = LifeSuper
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