⛵️👨‍💻 Gemini Expedition

HMS Beagle

The Gemini expedition attempts to analyse self-replicating patterns in the GoL and break them down to their building blocks. We hope that this procedure can yield fundamental insights on the nature of engineering and self-replicating machines.

Voyage

🌇 ➡️ ⛵ ➡️ ⛺ ➡️ ⛵ ➡️ 🗼 ➡️ ⛵ ➡️ 🌇

(30.05.2021) The first stop 📍 of the expedition is the 0E0P metacell

HMS Beagle


Motivation

In 2010 the first spaceship that moves by building a copy of itself was find in the GoL. This spaceship was named Gemini. By the time of its discovery, it was the most complicated device constructed in the GoL. With more than 800 000 cells and a period of about 34 000 000 generations, Gemini is undoubtely an incredible achivement of engineering. This pattern is the motivation for this expedition.

Objective

These are some of the questions we attempt to solve with the expedition:

  • Is the combinatorial evolution framework capable of describing these devices ?
  • How can we deal with pieces that are assembled or destroyed while the machine is running ?
  • What about self-replicating software ?
  • Is constructor theory relevant to describe the construction of these patterns ?

Final words: Check out this self-replicating molecular machine !!!