One of the hardest things to do in physics is to generate true, provably unpredictable randomness.
That's because it's impossible to determine randomness based on the output alone.
Dice may have nicks and flaws that influence how they roll.
Computer random-number generators are usually driven by algorithms.
Even coin flips are governed by physical forces that, in theory, could be predicted.
The difficulty lies not in generating numbers that appear random, but in showing that no one could have possibly predicted the outcome – that the system isn't secretly affected by subtle hidden rules or biases.
Now, a team of physicists at ETH Zurich in Switzerland has overcome that challenge by leveraging one of the strangest phenomena in quantum mechanics: entanglement.
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