When a computer generates a “random” number, it goes through certain algorithms that will allow it to come up with that number, which means it wasn’t really random after all. Random numbers are ...

Before computers and algorithms were developed to generate random numbers, there were dice. Middle Eastern tombs uncovered cubical dice dating back to the 20th century BC—but it’s believed they’re ...

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).

Hackers love random numbers, or more accurately, the pursuit of them. It turns out that computers are so good at following our exacting instructions that they are largely incapable of doing anything ...

Random numbers are crucial for computing, but our current algorithms aren’t truly random. Researchers at Brown University have now found a way to tap into the fluctuations of skyrmions to generate ...

“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 ...

Random numbers are increasingly important to our digitally connected world, with applications that include e-commerce, cryptography, and cloud computing. Producing a large amount of truly random ...

Researchers have come up with a way to generate truly random numbers using quantum mechanics. The method uses photons to generate a string of random ones and zeros, and leans on the laws of physics to ...

We think of random numbers as being somehow arbitrary and unknowable in advance. Mathematically, a given string of numbers is random if there is no shorter way to express the string than the string ...