Fwd: Physics News Update 605 - liquid crystal random number generator

[Bram Cohen]

Charles McElwain wrote:

> >James Gleeson, a physicist at Kent State
> >University (330-672-9592, gleeson at physics.kent.edu) has come up with a
> >cheap, fast solution.  He shoots laser light into a sample of liquid
> >crystals.  But because the sample is subject to a turbulent flow, causing
> >haphazard fluctuations in the orientation of the liquid crystals, the
> >digitized transmitted light coming from the sample represents a stream of
> >random numbers.

There's no way a laser's going to be cheaper than a Johnson noise
generator.

Really, the random number generation has been solved - use a Johnson noise
generator for the random bits, and (not withstanding /dev/random's
suboptimal behavior) put them through a cryptographic device which will
spew out indefinite amounts of random numbers once it's gotten
sufficiently seeded.

-Bram Cohen

"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"
                                        -- John Maynard Keynes


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