Slashdot Mirror
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."
In other news, the Slashdot effect causes a 500-lightyear radius of spacetime to disappear into an Infinite Improbability Field.
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.
Nehemiah and higher VIA cpus have a really good hardware entropy source, and it's supported in all recent linux kernels.
Are they actually running the "Optical quantum random number generator" every time you click submit, or are they just pulling the numbers pre-generated from a database?
Read Here
It's only one click away from the first page.
Next you'll be telling us you know more that he does.
As anything other than an academic exercise, this is silly if not outright dangerous.
Want to compromise any cryptographic system that uses this "pure" RNG? Man-in-the-middle the data connection, or just spoof DNS/IP addresses. Suddenly, you're in control of session key generation...
Plus I just asked for 1000 (the most allowed) numbers between 1 - 100. I was scared by what I got back.
I was amazed. Any sane person will NOT outsource the generation of their source of randomness - it is WAY to critical.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
WHile this is cool, on the other hand we mainly need random numbers for two things. The first is to make algorithms which require random numbers to run correctly work and to make games interesting to play. For that kind of purpose this is overkill :)
The other reason we need them is for secure encryption purposes. If you felt paranoid enough to need quantumly generated random numbers, would you really get the numbers over the internet from an untrusted source?
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.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
generate a few screens of random numbers, use a range of 0-255 and generate 1000 numbers.
/dev/dsp
...
...
open up a text editor and paste the results in, repeat the process several times till you have a nice big file of random numbers. Then simply
%> cat randomnumbers.txt
its an interesting noise , i think you will agree
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
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.
A random.org clone!
Yes, I know the numbers are generated in a different way, but they're still random. Is the quantum angle the reason for the wow factor here?
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.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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.
That's not quite the same sort of "there is no equation". There are equations that describe perfectly the time evolution of the 3-body problem. There is just (in general) no closed-form solution for the state of the system.
That said, even assuming a perfect integrator there's no way to measure the initial state precisely, so there are limits to how far you can evolve it computationally. However, similar arguments hold for the 2-body problem; so you'll have to find a more clever way of "macro-fying" quantum uncertainty effects.
Last I checked HotBits was still in the random number business, using some radioactive sources.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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.
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.
So ? OK, now we know which block was on top. Now, how to we know WHICH BLOCK IS TAKEN ? Becomes more random, eh ? Now presume that the person who takes blocks out of the sack is clinically unpredictable. Now, is this TRULY random ?
Heisenberg's uncertainity principle is as much simplification as Newton's Laws of Mechanics.
My point is:
If you know what the starting qualities of each undivisible particle were in the very beginning of the existence (call it Big Bang or gnab gib or whatever), and also the Equation of the World (as I like to call it), you could predict everything in the universe (if you had enough computing power, of course).
Of course, it's hard to get the knowledge needed for such prediction, but in principle it's not impossible...
(again, pardon my english.)
I got a hexidecimal random file a few years ago and randomly selected a passage of characters for my 128 bit wep key. Much stronger than "DonotHACKME" as a passphrase. Still as weak as WEP, but since it's a low data rate network, and a fairly secure key then it's going to take weeks for someone to collect enough info to crack it. Then all they have is access to the internet and an XP computer with no ports open.
But in general this type of resource is only good for small one off uses, research, and testing. They are providing it to see how good their distribution is, find problems with this type of setup before rolling out a for-pay service where you can have your own remote RNG. It would be good for laptop users who need an RNG that's more powerful than the dinky ones you can carry with you.
-Adam
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.
i asked for one random number between 0 and 10000 and i got back my base rate salary.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
It is wrong. Godel said so. The problem is that your metaformula describes all truths, but there are more truths than there are possible descriptions.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
There are statistical tests (see Knuth), like spectral flatness and incompressibility, but complete "certainty" has to rest on the theoretical underpinnings of QM, with testing by Bell's inequality (discussed elsewhere on this page).
And what kinds of applications might they be used for?
Secure communications, ignoring for now the problem of distributing the random bits.
Why does it need to be a quantum random number generator? How come you cant use an aerial and pick up white noise?
That "white noise" is contaminated by a jumble of deterministic TV and radio signals, that potential attackers could also detect or predict. It would be better to detach the aerial and amplify the output from a warm resistor, which is I think what the VIA motherboards do. Conceivably, though, somebody with far too much time and money on their hands could watch (or have watched) the molecules in your resistor unreasonably closely, and attempt guessing what they'll do. Using smaller particles is better, since observing them perturbs them so that their behavior can't be predicted, but that's QM by definition. You (and VIA) could also argue that warm resistors already include lots of quantum noise.
If we were ants living on a Rubik's cube, differential geometry would be a little more confusing.
"Consider Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: the more precisely the position is known, the less precisely the momentum can be known"
:)
this only exists because we have limited ability of measuring.,
any measurement on that level will influence the thing you are measuring.,
so we invented the theory of quantum mechanics to describe this phenomenon.,
but in fact we don't know for sure what's beyond this because we have no instruments to measure it.,
it's our own inability to not interact with a sample that shapes quantum mechanics! never forget that.,
this whole has led to many many proposterous theories including the collapsing states theorie and multiverse theory.,
heisenberg talks about propabilities but propability is inherently an abstraction of large quantities of things.,
there is always a system underneath propabilities wether we are able to see it or not.,
you also need to remember that all science is an APPROXIMATION of truth., our perception of truth will ALWAYS be limited by the quality of our measurements.,
since our measurements are imperfect so will our understanding of the truth be imperfect.,
i'm not saying that quantum mechanics does not work, just that it cannot describe the whole truth., in fact quantum mechanics 'works' because it limits itself to what we ARE capable of measuring., but there is no reason whatsoever to assume that what me measure is complete.,
the fact is that we are quite uncapable of describing every aspect of the universe we live in.,
live with that.,
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.
NO ID: BEING FREE MEANS NOT HAVING TO PROVE IT