Physicists achieve 'perfect randomness' for the first time ever

A close up of a screen showing a series of zeros and ones in purple boxes, some numbers lit up and others not.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have demonstrated a means of generating "perfect randomness" by using entangled superconducting qubits.

Creating true randomness is extremely difficult. Even the most sophisticated conventional random number generator can carry tiny biases. While in most everyday uses those biases are harmless, in cryptography — where the security of encrypted systems depends on unpredictability — even the most subtle pattern can become an exploitable weakness.