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The project, conducted at ETH Zurich, involved two connected cryostats that cooled superconducting units called qubits, which behave according to quantum mechanics. <\/p>\n
ETH Zurich <\/p>\n
Encryption systems rely on \u201crandom\u201d numbers, but conventional computers can\u2019t generate them perfectly. New research at the Swiss federal technology institute\u00a0ETH Zurich shows that quantum physics can.\n<\/p>\n
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June 15, 2026 – 17:00\n<\/p>\n
\n Alexander Nazaryan, The New York Times <\/p>\n
Researchers in Switzerland labored for 10 years, on a project that cost $12 million. The end result, published in Nature External link<\/a>last month?<\/p>\n Some really, really random numbers.<\/p>\n Random numbers are the guardians of digital information, which moves through the internet via a system of public and private keys. Private keys consist of hundreds of bits (bits are zeros or ones that encode extremely large numbers) generated by a computer. Computers can come very closeExternal link<\/a> to achieving true randomness, but they are driven by process.<\/p>\n \n More<\/p>\n More <\/p>\n Swiss AI\n <\/p>\n Switzerland\u2019s uphill climb to AI sovereignty\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n This content was published on <\/p>\n Nov 7, 2025 <\/p>\n Switzerland has invested millions to reduce its dependence on American tech giants. But for many, true sovereignty in\u00a0artificial intelligence (AI)\u00a0remains\u00a0out of reach.\u00a0 <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read more: Switzerland\u2019s uphill climb to AI sovereignty\u00a0\u00a0 A process can be complex and difficult to tease out, but it cannot be truly random. \u201cIf you knew what the computer was calculating, you would be able to predict it exactly,\u201d said Morgan W. Mitchell, a quantum physicist at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona. \u201cYou would be able to say exactly what\u2019s going to come out.\u201d Hackers have become adept at using math to probe encrypted systems for signs of weak randomness, which can give them access to private keys.<\/p>\n \u201cEffectively perfect\u201d result<\/p>\n The Swiss group tried to solve this problem through a process called randomness amplification, which takes lower-grade random numbers and boosts them via quantum physics. The published result is random numbers that are \u201ceffectively perfect,\u201d said Mitchell, who was not part of the Swiss team.<\/p>\n Other researchers have also recently attained impressive results when it comes to random number generation, but with more reliance on computers, whereas the Swiss experiment comes with an intrinsically elegant validation completely independent of processing power.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are, in a sense, trusting physics,\u201d Mitchell said.<\/p>\n The resulting paper \u201crepresents the most convincing demonstration to date that high-quality randomness can be produced from quantum processes,\u201d said Roger Colbeck, a professor of quantum information theory at King\u2019s College London and a pioneer in the field of quantum randomness.<\/p>\n The Swiss project, conducted at the university ETH Zurich, called for two connected refrigerators humming along at just above absolute zero, at 15 millikelvin, which is roughly 180 times colder than deep space. These cryostats, as they are known, cooled superconducting circuits called qubits, which behave according to quantum mechanics.<\/p>\n A view into the radiation shields (in cross-section) of the cryogenic quantum link that connected the two supercooling refrigerators in the experiment. <\/p>\n Kilian Kessler\/ETH Zurich <\/p>\n The challenge before the Swiss team was to find a way to harvest the raw randomness of the supercooled qubits without contaminating the experiment with classical physics. Pure quantum conditions are exceptionally difficult to maintain. Inevitably, boring old non-quantum reality seeps in, degrading the quality of the random numbers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt takes randomness to make randomness,\u201d said Krister Shalm, a professor of quantum physics at the University of Colorado and a senior research associate at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, who was not involved in the Swiss experiment.<\/p>\n The pivotal innovation of the new experiment was the placement of the two qubits in a tight bond known as entanglement, which is possible only under quantum conditions. \u201cThe advance is that we create entanglement at a high enough quality and at a high enough rate, so it\u2019s practically feasible to actually create random numbers through it,\u201d said Andreas Wallraff, a physicist and co-author of the Swiss paper.<\/p>\n \n More<\/p>\n More <\/p>\n Explainer: how vulnerable is Switzerland to cyber-attacks? <\/p>\n This content was published on <\/p>\n Sep 5, 2023 <\/p>\n Cyberattacks are a growing headache for governments and companies around the world. Switzerland is no exception. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read more: Explainer: how vulnerable is Switzerland to cyber-attacks? Over nine hours, the researchers used their experimental setup to measure the entangled qubits 1.34 billion times. Taking the results of those quantum measurements, an extractor algorithm then transformed 5.4 billion bits sourced from a somewhat less sophisticated random number generator into 45 million bits of extremely high-quality randomness.<\/p>\n \u201cThis work does genuinely advance the field,\u201d Shalm said.<\/p>\n Given all the encrypted informationExternal link<\/a> bouncing around on the internet \u2014 potentially close to 20 exabytes per day \u2014 the payoff for a savvy hacker could be immense, even if their hit rate were relatively low. In 2012, researchers used a straightforward approach (Euclid\u2019s algorithm, a basic math concept) to find that 0.2% of public keys in a database were not random enough. Though seemingly small, this was seen as a huge security lapse, considering that the database contained 7.1 million keys.<\/p>\n \u201cIn cryptography, however paranoid you think you are, you\u2019re not paranoid enough,\u201d Shalm said. Echoing the same theme, Mitchell said that the Swiss team was \u201cable to generate randomness that even a paranoid user can trust.\u201d (Paranoia seems, justifiably enough, to be a common sentiment in quantum cryptography.)<\/p>\n In 2010, the gaming platform PlayStation 3 had its defenses breached by hackersExternal link<\/a> who discovered that Sony was recycling External link<\/a>its random numbers. In a 2023 attack known as Milk SadExternal link<\/a>, hackers exploited the generation of weak private keys by the cryptocurrency tool Libbitcoin Explorer. They stole External link<\/a>$900,000.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you take the most pure source of randomness that you can get,\u201d Wallraff said, \u201cyou can fix that problem.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"hiker\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781537950_955_266632850_highres.jpg\")
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