6 ms·

Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation Power Spectrum as a Random Bit Generator

36 points by aburan28 11y ago

cozzyd 11y ago
It's funny to have to think about cosmic variance with regards to an RNG.
awakeasleep 11y ago
Love to read someone analyze the feasibility of satellite based attacks on this rng
- andyjohnson0 11y ago
  A discretely hovering UAV/drone would be cheaper and more targetable.
- woliveirajr 11y ago
  Why use satellites when you can use Microwave Oven Leaks?
j_m_b 11y ago
This is along the lines of hotbits https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/
Inthenameofmine 11y ago
This is absolutely awesome. We've been discussing this idea for quite some time at out blocckhain devshop. Combining the CMB Radiation with an accurate measure of redshift you could create an accurate and immutable way of measuring time, essentially a new type of Proof of Work without the work.
- saganus 11y ago
  This sounds interesting, however I don't think I fully understand how those two things would create a way of measuring time. Could you expand a bit on this?
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    Assuming I'm on the same, erm, wavelength, one could extrapolate the passage of time as a function of cosmic radiation since any observation into deep space is also an observation of time (a planet one light-year away looks to us today as it did one year ago). I think it's a fascinating premise. We don't really know what time is, and if we never figure it out and how to control it, all of existence will vanish when entropy gets the last laugh. That is, if human conflicts don't do us in first...
  - Inthenameofmine 11y ago
    Bitcoin is effectively an oracle service. It creates a random state which is dependent on a previous random state. Generating the state is NP hard, verifying it is P (can be verified in polynomial time). The oracle output state is used for sequencing state (meaning the blocks and who gets to sign off on the latest block). So POW is an independently verifiable method of sequencing state among unknown signing members (i.e. the miners). The Microwave Background Radiation is a perfect candidate for both NP state as well as universal (really, anywhere in the universe!) time keeping. It is NP hard to "generate" the state which will be observed at a certain time in the future, but immediately verifiable as long as you are online to observe it at that time. That said, it does not solve the "problem" of deciding on who creates the next block in a truly distributed system, it only makes immutability of state possible. At our devshop we have come to the conclusion that current "blockchain" implementations are practically useless in the real world. There are several reasons for that, the main one being that it makes zero sense for state transition to happen outside of the state machine which created that piece of information in the first place. An example of such a wrong implementation would be Ripple, where IOUs are being state transitioned by nodes who do not issue the IOUs in the first place. It's like tracking IOUs on a huge Google spreadsheet, it makes no sense. All state should be stored and state transitioned on it's own blockchain because the finality of the transition depends on the issuer anyways, and the blockchains need a common input/output based protocol for reconciling, sequencing, and verifying each other's state. The future is a bit like adding Git to a database and adding a cryptographic reconciliation protocol so the databases can talk to one another.
    - 11y ago
- DavidSJ 11y ago
  Can you elaborate on how this could replace proof-of-work in a blockchain context? Certainly I can use records of astronomical observations to prove a message was sent after a certain date, but the double-spend risk is mainly mitigated by the ability to prove that a message was sent before a certain date.
barkingcat 11y ago
What if CMB is not random? Time to break out the idea pad for planning my next science fiction story.
- bazzargh 11y ago
  It's been done to an extent - a flashed message in the CMB appeared in Three Body Problem, here's the excerpt http://www.tor.com/2014/09/23/the-three-body-problem-the-universe-flickers/ http://www.tor.com/2014/09/23/the-three-body-problem-the-uni...
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    Stargate Universe (small spoiler alert) was also investigating a message in the CMB before it was canceled.
  - saganus 11y ago
    That's a very captivating story! I want more...
  - barkingcat 11y ago
    On my list!! It's the Nebula winner so I've heard of it but still on hold at the library! Thanks for the mention!
PaulHoule 11y ago
"We're on a mission from God"
ape4 11y ago
This time "awesome" really applies.
nayuki 11y ago
What advantage does this technique have over measuring radioactive atoms?
kenesom1 11y ago
Very interesting. Atmospherics might also be useful as an RNG or possibly a trustworthy public randomness beacon. "There are an average of 45 lightning flashes per second around the world. [...] The radio signature (like a fingerprint) of a lightning strike can be detected around the world [...] [R]eceiving ELF/VLF waves allows us to determine the exact location of most lightning strikes on the whole planet, with just a small number of ELF/VLF receivers [...]" http://vlf.stanford.edu/research/introduction-vlf http://vlf.stanford.edu/research/introduction-vlf http://vlf.stanford.edu/research/global-lightning-geo-location http://vlf.stanford.edu/research/global-lightning-geo-locati...
- okramcivokram 11y ago
  There's a great project blitzortung.org that I think uses that technology to create a real time map of lightnings.
  - kenesom1 11y ago
    That's awesome!
judegomila 11y ago
Based on Penrose's work there may be non randomness in the CMB, with better imaging tech we may find that this is not a good source of randomness: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.5162v1.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.5162v1.pdf
- dagss 11y ago
  This is mainly Gurzadyan's work, and it shows such a complete lack of understanding for basic statistical analysis it's not even funny. They basically assume that if you have an i.i.d. random vector x, then a linearly transformed vector z = Q x, with Q some linear map, should also have coeffients without correlations. For a start look here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.5051 http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.5051 -- beyond explaining the fallacies it has references to 3 independent analyses that failed to reproduce the result on the same data set. The only interesting discussion to be had here is one about journals and peer review practices (i.e., how A&A could let something like this slip through). That said, the randomness (or nature of randomness) in the CMB is actively researched (such a how close the random signal is to Gaussian). And anything you think is "CMB" run the risk of being foregrounds or systematics which would not be "random" in one sense.
AdamN 11y ago
I believe this has been done for decades - am I wrong? Even Lava lamps have been used for rng (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavarand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavarand).

36 points by aburan28 11y ago

cozzyd 11y ago

It's funny to have to think about cosmic variance with regards to an RNG.

awakeasleep 11y ago

Love to read someone analyze the feasibility of satellite based attacks on this rng

andyjohnson0 11y ago
A discretely hovering UAV/drone would be cheaper and more targetable.
woliveirajr 11y ago
Why use satellites when you can use Microwave Oven Leaks?

j_m_b 11y ago

This is along the lines of hotbits https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/

Inthenameofmine 11y ago

This is absolutely awesome. We've been discussing this idea for quite some time at out blocckhain devshop. Combining the CMB Radiation with an accurate measure of redshift you could create an accurate and immutable way of measuring time, essentially a new type of Proof of Work without the work.

saganus 11y ago
This sounds interesting, however I don't think I fully understand how those two things would create a way of measuring time. Could you expand a bit on this?
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  Assuming I'm on the same, erm, wavelength, one could extrapolate the passage of time as a function of cosmic radiation since any observation into deep space is also an observation of time (a planet one light-year away looks to us today as it did one year ago). I think it's a fascinating premise. We don't really know what time is, and if we never figure it out and how to control it, all of existence will vanish when entropy gets the last laugh. That is, if human conflicts don't do us in first...
- Inthenameofmine 11y ago
  Bitcoin is effectively an oracle service. It creates a random state which is dependent on a previous random state. Generating the state is NP hard, verifying it is P (can be verified in polynomial time). The oracle output state is used for sequencing state (meaning the blocks and who gets to sign off on the latest block). So POW is an independently verifiable method of sequencing state among unknown signing members (i.e. the miners). The Microwave Background Radiation is a perfect candidate for both NP state as well as universal (really, anywhere in the universe!) time keeping. It is NP hard to "generate" the state which will be observed at a certain time in the future, but immediately verifiable as long as you are online to observe it at that time. That said, it does not solve the "problem" of deciding on who creates the next block in a truly distributed system, it only makes immutability of state possible. At our devshop we have come to the conclusion that current "blockchain" implementations are practically useless in the real world. There are several reasons for that, the main one being that it makes zero sense for state transition to happen outside of the state machine which created that piece of information in the first place. An example of such a wrong implementation would be Ripple, where IOUs are being state transitioned by nodes who do not issue the IOUs in the first place. It's like tracking IOUs on a huge Google spreadsheet, it makes no sense. All state should be stored and state transitioned on it's own blockchain because the finality of the transition depends on the issuer anyways, and the blockchains need a common input/output based protocol for reconciling, sequencing, and verifying each other's state. The future is a bit like adding Git to a database and adding a cryptographic reconciliation protocol so the databases can talk to one another.
  - 11y ago
DavidSJ 11y ago
Can you elaborate on how this could replace proof-of-work in a blockchain context? Certainly I can use records of astronomical observations to prove a message was sent after a certain date, but the double-spend risk is mainly mitigated by the ability to prove that a message was sent before a certain date.

barkingcat 11y ago

What if CMB is not random? Time to break out the idea pad for planning my next science fiction story.

bazzargh 11y ago
It's been done to an extent - a flashed message in the CMB appeared in Three Body Problem, here's the excerpt http://www.tor.com/2014/09/23/the-three-body-problem-the-universe-flickers/ http://www.tor.com/2014/09/23/the-three-body-problem-the-uni...
- nitrogen 11y ago
  Stargate Universe (small spoiler alert) was also investigating a message in the CMB before it was canceled.
- saganus 11y ago
  That's a very captivating story! I want more...
- barkingcat 11y ago
  On my list!! It's the Nebula winner so I've heard of it but still on hold at the library! Thanks for the mention!

PaulHoule 11y ago

"We're on a mission from God"

ape4 11y ago

This time "awesome" really applies.

nayuki 11y ago

What advantage does this technique have over measuring radioactive atoms?

kenesom1 11y ago

Very interesting. Atmospherics might also be useful as an RNG or possibly a trustworthy public randomness beacon. "There are an average of 45 lightning flashes per second around the world. [...] The radio signature (like a fingerprint) of a lightning strike can be detected around the world [...] [R]eceiving ELF/VLF waves allows us to determine the exact location of most lightning strikes on the whole planet, with just a small number of ELF/VLF receivers [...]" http://vlf.stanford.edu/research/introduction-vlf http://vlf.stanford.edu/research/introduction-vlf http://vlf.stanford.edu/research/global-lightning-geo-location http://vlf.stanford.edu/research/global-lightning-geo-locati...

okramcivokram 11y ago
There's a great project blitzortung.org that I think uses that technology to create a real time map of lightnings.
- kenesom1 11y ago
  That's awesome!

judegomila 11y ago

Based on Penrose's work there may be non randomness in the CMB, with better imaging tech we may find that this is not a good source of randomness: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.5162v1.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.5162v1.pdf

dagss 11y ago
This is mainly Gurzadyan's work, and it shows such a complete lack of understanding for basic statistical analysis it's not even funny. They basically assume that if you have an i.i.d. random vector x, then a linearly transformed vector z = Q x, with Q some linear map, should also have coeffients without correlations. For a start look here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.5051 http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.5051 -- beyond explaining the fallacies it has references to 3 independent analyses that failed to reproduce the result on the same data set. The only interesting discussion to be had here is one about journals and peer review practices (i.e., how A&A could let something like this slip through). That said, the randomness (or nature of randomness) in the CMB is actively researched (such a how close the random signal is to Gaussian). And anything you think is "CMB" run the risk of being foregrounds or systematics which would not be "random" in one sense.

AdamN 11y ago

I believe this has been done for decades - am I wrong? Even Lava lamps have been used for rng (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavarand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavarand).