Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Very little in this life is truly random. A coin flip is influenced ...

Randomness is a pursuit in a similar vein to metrology or time and frequency, in that inordinate quantities of effort can be expended in pursuit of its purest form. The Holy Grail is a source of ...

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 ...

If your name gets picked for jury duty, it’s because a computer used a random number generator to select it. The same goes for tax audits or when you opt for a quick pick lottery ticket. But how can ...

Lotteries, accidents and rolls of dice — the world around us is full of unpredictable events. Yet generating a truly random series of numbers for encryption has remained a surprisingly difficult task.

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 ...

RANDOMNESS IS A valuable commodity. Computer models of complex systems ranging from the weather to the stockmarket are voracious consumers of random numbers. Cryptography, too, relies heavily on ...