Crystal-based Random Number Generator
Making truly random numbers is insanely difficult. This is because computers do not like randomness and cannot work with it. But crystals can.
Image by Pezibear from Pixabay
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Random Is Not Random
While it may not feel like it but generating random numbers was and is very tricky for computers. This is because it goes against the very core of their existence. The thing is computers were designed to be as predictable as possible. The result of the counter contradictory pressures is that a computer can really only make pseudo-random numbers. And that can be a problem.
The thing is – random numbers are important for many applications in many different fields. For example, they are completely essential in encryption. The majority of current ways to encrypt data are literally dependent on the constant generating of random numbers. And since the numbers are not truly random but only pseudo-random such encryption can be “relatively” easily broken with a piece of handy software that will find the system and break the cipher.
Alchemy Of Randomness
Scientists all over the world are trying to figure out ways to get truly random numbers. A team from the University in Glasgow developed a new, fascinating, and almost alchemical process to get random numbers that uses the growth of crystals. They crossbred chemistry with software.
But why growing crystals? The process of crystallization is random because the transformation of chemical substances from a disordered into the more ordered state of a crystal depends on many various factors. The result is that many random variables influence the crystallization process starting with the geometry of the growing crystals, up to the time of the creation and many factors in between.
Lee Cronin and his colleagues built an ingenious crystallization robot so they could mine random numbers. Part of this automated system are crystallization bowls in which different solutions crystallized together with the necessary operating systems and a camera. The robot was taking pictures of the ongoing crystallizations. These pictures were then transformed into zeroes and ones depending on how the crystals grew. In the end, the robot put all the ones and zeroes together and got a random number.
Cronin and his team tried their system with a common commercially available encryption application. Both systems had the task of encrypting the word crystal. Then they used a common system that breaks the ciphers. The result was that the cipher that was created by the crystallization robot was harder to break so the strange random number generating system works.
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