Really random numbers created from crystals
Robot that monitors crystallization could lead to new ways to study stochastic processes in chemistry
A truly random number is hard to find. The numbers chosen by people are not random at all, and the pseudorandom numbers created by computers are not very random either. Now scientists have developed a way to generate numbers from a genuine source of randomness – the unpredictable stage of exactly when, where and how a crystal starts to grow in a solution.