Caterloopillar is the name given to a family of spaceships containing two major parts - the front and the back. In Caterloopillar each part has the properties of a universal constructor, and thus each part is constructing the building blocks of the other part, while also reading and moving a construction tape. As the name suggests, this creates somewhat paradoxical design, similar to the "strange loop" concept.
The basic Caterloopillar design can be trivially adapted to produce spaceships with an infinite number of different speeds -- in theory, any rational speed strictly less than c/4.
June 1-2: Goldtiger997completes the critical final-stage synthesis of a lobster spaceship via an almost completely diagonally symmetric collision between 39 gliders and a 175-bit still lifeconstellation; a collaborative effort produces a 186-glider construction recipe the same day, reduced to 118 gliders over the next two days.
May 17: lumibuilds a maximally Golly-friendly self-synchronized linear replicator, speed 256c/1048576, bounding box 65676 × 65520, minimum population 16702; each new child copy is precisely in sync with the parent.
... that the first stable reflector was found in October 1996, and the first fast stable reflector appeared in 2013, allowing the construction of oscillators of all periods ≥43 ticks?
... that twenty-two spaceship velocities have been constructed, excluding several infinitely adjustable families of ships?
... that to display the smallest known gun pattern for a Gemini spaceship at 1 cell = 1 pixel, on a standard-density video monitor, a screen larger than one square mile would be needed?
... that no odd-period glider guns were known before 1995, when a period 565 p5-spark-assisted B-heptomino loop was constructed by David Buckingham?
