From: Richard Childers <rchilder@us.oracle.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 92 22:00:11 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re:  Mac PGP report and Rander progress
Message-ID: <9211280559.AA22444@rchilder.us.oracle.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



"Has anyone given any thought to generating random numbers by counting
 particle emissions from a radioactive source?  This might be more
 reliably random than using purely electronic means."

The Exploratorium has a display - a large set of charged plates by which
one can see spark trails elicited by high-energy particles as they pass
through the array - which has often intrigued me as a source of noise ...
what is more unpredictable and harder to spoof than a cosmic ray detector ?
Especially if you use not only the timing of the particle's arrival, but
also its direction through the array of plates, as inputs to the random
number generator ...

Air pressure, temperature and other ambient factors in the environment
could also be used as sources for unpredictable inputs ( measuring very
small variations, IE, millions of a degree or some such ).


-- richard

=====
-- richard childers		rchilder@us.oracle.com		1 415 506 2411
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