Randomness and reality go together like pizza and beer. March and madness. Ice and cream. It didn’t used to be that way. Isaac Newton supposedly established that reality wasn’t random at all. It was ...

One of the pieces of equipment for the quantum random number generator in the NIST Boulder laboratories. Very little in this life is truly random. A coin flip is influenced by the flipper’s force, its ...

In physics, Albert Einstein is famous for two things: developing the theory of relativity, and hating quantum mechanics. Relativity is a colossal achievement, with the special theory of 1905 putting ...

For more than a century, thermodynamics has described how heat flows and engines run, while quantum mechanics has ruled the ...

Randomness is essential to some research, but it’s always been prohibitively complicated to achieve. Now, we can use “pseudorandomness” instead. Nothing is certain in the quantum realm. A particle, ...

Once again quantum physics gives us philosophical implications: physicists have shown how a small amount of randomness can be amplified without limit. Once again quantum physics gives us philosophical ...

The task, which even conventional supercomputers can’t perform, could improve online security and make some processes, such as choosing a jury, truly fair. "That's so random" is a common saying people ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about physics, science, academia, and pop culture. As someone whose primary claim to fame is writing physics books ...