How Quantum Mechanics Can Help Protect Your Secrets

Most of us aren't very comfortable thinking about randomness. People like five-year plans and the comfort of "everything happens for a reason." Even the messy among us claim there's order in their chaos. Despite this, many processes that are fundamental to our way of life rely on random numbers.Random numbers are key to stock market predictions, the security behind online shopping, and the integrity of clinical research trials. Last week in The Optical Society's journal Optica, a team of scienti...