This eater was found by Dave Buckingham in the 1970s.
Mostly it works like the ordinary eater1 but with two slight
differences that make it useful despite its size: it takes longer to
recover from each bite, and it can eat objects appearing at two
different positions.
The first property means that, among other things, it can eat a
glider in a position that would destroy an eater1. This novel
glider-eating action is occasionally of use in itself, and combined
with the symmetry means that an eater2 can eat gliders travelling
along four adjacent glider lanes, as shown below.
The following eater2 variant (Stephen Silver, May 1998) can be
useful for obtaining smaller bounding boxes. A more compact
variant with the same purpose can be seen under gliderless.
Game of Life Explanation
The Game of Life is not your typical computer game. It is a cellular
automaton, and was invented by Cambridge mathematician John Conway.
This game became widely known when it was mentioned in an article
published by Scientific American in 1970. It consists of a grid of
cells which, based on a few mathematical rules, can live, die or
multiply. Depending on the initial conditions, the cells form various
patterns throughout the course of the game.
Rules
For a space that is populated:
Examples
Each cell with one or no neighbors dies, as if by solitude.
Each cell with four or more neighbors dies, as if by
overpopulation.
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