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 ...

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).

Random numbers are a precious commodity, whether expressed as strings of decimal digits or simply 1s and 0s. Computer scientist George Marsaglia of Florida State University, however, likes giving them ...

To simulate chance occurrences, a computer can’t literally toss a coin or roll a die. Instead, it relies on special numerical recipes for generating strings of shuffled digits that pass for random ...

Random numbers are invaluable. They're used in the encryption that makes online banking secure. Economists, physicists, pollsters, and casinos rely on them. Yet until recently, producing large sets of ...

If you want to start an argument in certain circles, claim to have a random number generation algorithm. Turns out that producing real random numbers is hard, which is why people often turn to strange ...

Computers have trouble generating truly random numbers - but a new method could help A new method for computer-generating random numbers is being called "remarkable", and could help improve computer ...

Mathematicians concerned with cryptography need novel ways of generating random numbers in order to securely transmit data such as a credit card number or especially private email. But it's hard for ...

Skyrmions, tiny magnetic anomalies that arise in two-dimensional materials, can be used to generate true random numbers useful in cryptography and probabilistic computing. Whether for use in ...

Computers are known to be precise and — usually — repeatable. That’s why it is so hard to get something that seems random out of them. Yet random things are great for games, encryption, and multimedia ...