Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Quantum Random Numbers For Download

Posted by timothy on from the 404*pi-404^e-404mod401 dept.

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."

9 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Uh-oh by bobthemonkey13 · · Score: 4, Funny

    In other news, the Slashdot effect causes a 500-lightyear radius of spacetime to disappear into an Infinite Improbability Field.

  2. is this really random? by glen604 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  3. Re:Truly Random Number ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative
    Anyway, there cannot be a TRULY random number. There is nothing random. For everything there is an equation.

    Read Here

    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.

  4. Interesting, but not that useful by Chris_Jefferson · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Interesting, but not that useful by MerlynEmrys67 · · Score: 4, Informative
      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.

      --
      I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
  5. Re:This is SOOOOOO Bad by JabberWokky · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I would imagine that it's suffering from overuse right now. Top story on Slashdot and all.

    However, yes... you can trust this to be random, and no, you can't trust it to "correctly destroy all of the information between here and there".

    I don't believe that the intent of this is to do realworld crypto nor games (which is what other people are claiming the other "major" use of random numbers are). A set of purely random numbers is really only useful to people testing mathematic theories or other high math science work. For crypto, decent pseudo-random sequences (or the old "pull from an analog source" trick) is perfectly fine. This is overkill for realworld crypto (not to mention broadcast via the internet), which means that this is primarily useful - to math scientists.

    --
    Evan

    --
    "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
  6. Re:Truly Random Number ? by Too+Much+Noise · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  7. What about Hotbits? by FooAtWFU · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  8. Re:Truly Random Number ? by Too+Much+Noise · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.