I recall someone telling me about your compressed Life work back in the 1980's (??), and I thought it was extremely cool, but I haven't kept up with it.
Do you have a recent link?
Just try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife . I think Elsevier still has the 1984 Physica D article paywalled. I scanned the seven separate pages as http://gosper.org/physicad0.png .. http://gosper.org/physicad6.png, (didn't somebody "staple" these?), but Tom Rokicki (et al)'s Golly<http://golly.sourceforge.net/>has exceeded my wildest expectations (and blew away Conway when I showed him).
BTW, with the advent of the "holographic universe" (wherein the details of the physics within a volume are encoded in the surface of that volume), is there a "holographic Life" ?
Dunno. Seems unlikely, due to irreversibility.
At 05:04 AM 5/24/2012, you wrote:
Also compare the growth over time of Golly's memory and save-size running Hickerson's primer, 1st quadrant of Life > Miscellaneous > four primers.
(Enumerates the primes, starting with ~ 3000 dots.)
--rwg