Quantum Random Numbers For Download

PSUdaemon writes "The University of Geneva has produced a website that allows you to download truly random numbers generated from an Optical quantum random number generator. They will also be releasing a client API that you can use directly in your codes to download random numbers."

Not bad, not bad...

[Vaevictis666]

Just ran it through two tests of 1000 numbers with the following result counts:

Array
(
[0] => 505
[1] => 495
)

Array
(
[0] => 108
[1] => 95
[2] => 99
[3] => 92
[4] => 119
[5] => 87
[6] => 105
[7] => 101
[8] => 80
[9] => 114
}

Not too terribly bad of a distribution to my eye.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyway, there cannot be a TRULY random number. There is nothing random. For everything there is an equation.

Read Here [randomnumbers.info]

It's only one click away from the first page.

According to Nicolas Gisin, professor at the Group of Applied Physics, .Quantum physics is the only physical theory predicting that the outcome of certain phenomena is random. It is thus a natural choice to use it to generate true random numbers..

Next you'll be telling us you know more that he does.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Experiment 626]

At the macroscopic level, that's true, but at the quantum level the type of determinism you describe ("For everything there is an equation") breaks down. Consider Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: the more precisely the position is known, the less precisely the momentum can be known. Even with instruments advanced enough to measure one of these values with infinite precision, the other would be unknown, and no equation could be created to describe the particle's state. It could be anything, and there is no way to predict what its exact value will be.

This is very useful for true randomness, unlike the sack of blocks. If you measured the state of the blocks, you would find that they obey Newtonian mechanics, and you could predict which block was on top, given enough information about their state at some point and the forces acting upon them. With quantum particles, gathering that much information about the state is precluded by the laws of quantum physics, so the answer is effectively random.

Re:Interesting, but not that useful

[MerlynEmrys67]

What would be much more interesting would be if intel/AMD started including a random number generator directly on processors which allowed you to get some random numbers via some random process on chip.

Don't know about AMD, but this has been in Intel's chipsets since at least the 815 (I am pretty sure it was in the 810 chipset). They use a noisy diode and read the the value across it. I know it is certified, but I have never seen the operating range of the certification (I assume it is between x & y degrees Celcius - and at some point the diode starts to read more 0's than 1's or the other way around)

Many 3rd party crypto companies have other RNGs built into their hardware - it is rather important for various security purposes.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[AuMatar]

IT doesn't even hold up in macro worlds. Take a simple 2 body gravitational problem. Solvable since Newton's day. Add in a third body. Unsolvable. The fact that there are unsolvable macro occurences is the basis of chaos theory.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Too Much Noise]

There is. Google for Bell's inequality or the Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen paradoxfor a starting point. It does involve some more than skin-deep knowledge of quantum mechanics though.

The bottom line is there's no theory of 'local hidden variables' that would make quantum mechanics a deterministic theory in the 'classical' sense.

What about Hotbits?

[FooAtWFU]

Last I checked HotBits [fourmilab.ch] was still in the random number business, using some radioactive sources.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Too Much Noise]

that's a different kettle of fish. N-body problems are not analytically solvable. That does not make them 'random'. More to the point, you have a case in which accumulated imprecisions will lead (eventually) to a complete prediction failure. However, the equations of the theory are still deterministic - given the initial conditions with enough accuracy, you can predict (with some required accuracy) the final ones, at least for a given time interval. It's just that the more precision and longer time you want, the more precise your initial conditions have to be.

In quantum mechanics, there's no such 'eventually'. Example: set up an atom in an excited state and try to predict whether it will be in the same state after 1 minute - all you can say is "will be with some probability", hence no mechanical determinism here. You can also make the time interval as short as you like.

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[Too Much Noise]

The EPR paradox, as modified by Bell, is actually a test of Quantum Mechanics - on the level of some basic assumptions, including the lack of classical determinism. It was tested (mostly in the '60-'70) and found to hold w.r.t. this issue (see Phys Rev Lett 49, 91) - were Bell's inequality to be found true, it would have meant the QM assumptions were wrong, making all QM wrong. Guess what, it didn't hold true ...

So, at least the general principles of QM are correct. What this means is that there are non-local effects embedded in the theory, which make a deterministic (and thus predictable, i.e. non-random) description impossible.

Re:Interesting, but not that useful

[N8w8]

Don't forget the RNG [via.com.tw] on VIA's Nehemiah CPU core. I've heard it's very fast and very random.

Re:Interesting, but not that useful

[Hegestratos]

Don't know about AMD, but this has been in Intel's chipsets since at least the 815 (I am pretty sure it was in the 810 chipset).

Intel discontinued this feature some time ago. See these pages [comcast.net] for details.

Cheers, Alfred

Re:Truly Random Number ?

[benhaha]

So, at least the general principles of QM are correct. What this means is that there are non-local effects embedded in the theory, which make a deterministic (and thus predictable, i.e. non-random) description impossible.

No, not quite. It makes a local, deterministic description impossible. It does not make it impossible that the outcome of each measurement event was determined by the quantum wavefunction of the universe as a whole, only that it can't be predicted by a quantum wavefunction involving only the measured particles.

The further experiments done involve specifically tackling whether the quantum state of the detectors can explain the outcome of the experiment. This would remove the faster-than-light element of the paradox, since the detectors have been sitting there a sufficiently long time for any putative communication to travel between them and the particle source.

The latest experiment switches the state of the detectors using another quantum event using a single photon so that it is done randomly. This proves that the results of measurements cannot be predicted by a theory which doesn't include the quantum state of the switching photon. It does not prove that the universe as a whole is not governed by a deterministic wavefunction. In fact, to my mind, the more non-local the alternatives get, the more plausable it looks.