While world events are often difficult to predict, true randomness is surprisingly hard to find. In recent years, physicists have turned to quantum mechanics for a solution, using the inherently ...

Hackers love random numbers, or more accurately, the pursuit of them. It turns out that computers are so good at following our exacting instructions that they are largely incapable of doing anything ...

Randomness rules the very fabric of reality. So it only makes sense that scientists have figured out how to use nature’s randomness as a tool in our mundane world. Random numbers go hand-in-hand with ...

In September 2013, whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that American and British intelligence agencies had successfully cracked much of the online encryption internet users used to keep their ...

Although schemes to generate random-looking numbers are easy to come up with, assessing their security — the extent to which they are truly unpredictable to a potential adversary — is notoriously ...

Researchers have built the fastest random-number generator ever made, using a simple laser. It exploits fluctuations in the intensity of light to generate randomness—a coveted resource in applications ...

Fast randomness A diagram of the quantum random number generator on the photonic integrated chip. (Courtesy: Bing Bai and Yao Zheng) Smartphones could soon come equipped with a quantum-powered source ...

Random number sequences are essential to a host of encryption schemes. But true randomness in the strict sense is not possible in the classical world; it only occurs in quantum-mechanical processes.