Talk:Speed of light (cellular automaton)

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Unclear example

"For example, a glider is said to have a speed of c / 4, as it takes four generations for a given state to be translated by one cell. Similarly, the "lightweight spaceship" is said to have a speed of c / 2, as it takes four generations for a given state to be translated by two cells."

Generalising this we get these two statements:

X is said to have a speed of c / Y, as it takes Y generations for a given state to be translated by Z cell(s)

Similarly, P is said to have a speed of c / Q, as it takes R generations for a given state to be translated by Q cells.

Notice how in the first example, the divisor of c is the number of generations while in the second example, it is just the number of cells. To me this gives an unclear impression.

Should it be more explicit in stating that the divisor is c/(Y/Z) or c/(R/Q)???

I don't think it's particularly unclear, but I see your point. Perhaps it might be helpful to define the notion of "speed" more explicitly, so that the (translation distance)/(generations to achieve translation) definition becomes more clear. — Hyperdeath^(Talk) 12:13, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not faster than light

Certain patterns can move at a speed greater than one cell per generation, however at a heavy cost (such as the elimination of all related gliders).

This part and the title Faster than light propagation might lead someone to believe that information can propagate faster than the speed of light under certain conditions (despite the fact that this would go against what is said in the summary and the very definition of speed of light). It might be worth noting in this part that no information actually propagates faster than light since the "annihilating" gliders create the front of the new LWSS and the presence of a LWSS before the collision only "fixes" the very back of the new LWSS which means the information propagates at the speed of light (length of LWSS is 5). It gives the illusion of faster than light propagation but it is not. --BenevolentBoss (talk) 01:07, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I noticed that, it's almost as if it's creating a new object further away which only happens to be identical to the original.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 11:03, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

After examining the history of this page i found that this is due to a recent edit, possibly made to shorten this part of the article. Since this, as I mentioned earlier, creates a certain ambiguity I will undo this edit. The previous version describes the phenomenon well in my opinion. --BenevolentBoss (talk) 00:00, 5 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]