Quick! Think of a number between 1 and 10…was it 7? If it was, don't feel too bad, as human brains are notoriously bad at both true randomness and understanding probability. Even if you're too ...

“This is a marvelous step” toward more efficient random number generation, says Rajarshi Roy, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park who was not involved in the work. Random number ...

A team of international scientists has developed a laser that can generate 254 trillion random digits per second, more than a hundred times faster than computer-based random number generators (RNG).

Peter Bierhorst’s machine is no pinnacle of design. Nestled in the Rocky Mountains inside a facility for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the photon-generating behemoth spans an ...

A software routine that produces a random number. Used in applications such as computer games and cryptographic key generation, random numbers are easily created in a computer due to many random ...

Random numbers are critical to encryption algorithms, but they're nigh-on impossible for computers to generate. Now, Swedish researchers say they've created a new, super-secure quantum random number ...

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 ...