NIST Launches Quantum Random Number Beacon with Verifiable Nonlocal Entanglement
Mohamed Abdel-Kareem2026-03-17T13:18:51-07:00The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in partnership with the University of Colorado Boulder, has developed and deployed the Colorado University Randomness Beacon (CURBy), the first random number generator to use quantum entanglement as a certifiable source of randomness. The system is publicly accessible and operates under a protocol that allows any user to verify its outputs, addressing a long-standing challenge in cryptographic and public randomness services. CURBy is based on a NIST-run Bell test that produces raw randomness from entangled photon pairs. This type of quantum nonlocality ensures the outcomes are fundamentally unpredictable and cannot be pre-determined or [...]