Here's a small computer program. Start with some number that we'll call SEED. (Most computers start with SEED equal to 1.) Multiply SEED by 1,103,515,245, then add 12,345 to that, then divide it by 65,536, then divide it again by 32,768. Take the remainder of what's left, round it up, and make it your new SEED and repeat this procedure every time you need some random number.

This is a summary of the "rand" function, a common utility used for delivering "random" numbers. A common dirty joke among computer scientists is that computers can deliver random numbers, random values, random anything. But it's not true. John von Neumann, noted mathematician and computer pioneer, is quoted as saying "Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin."

People try to generate randomness anyway, and randomness has lots of applications in computers. Certain certain games of chance, for example (electronic versions of roulette, blackjack and so on), or in cryptography and secure transmissions over the web: they're secure because, say, I'm hiding my information behind two 100-digit prime numbers. I'll convert a message I want to transmit into a string of numbers, multiply them with these two numbers, and transmit the result. If you knew those numbers, or how to find them, you could intercept my transmission, divide the result with them and read my transmission. But the numbers are random, you'd have to keep trying 100-digit numbers until you picked the right two, and you'd probably have an easier time waiting for the sun to go supernova.

Bruce Schneier, in his book Applied Cryptography, discusses the matter of computerized "randomness." Schneier states that computers are rule-governed machines (unless you're using any Microsoft products). You put something into a computer, entirely predictable rules are applied, and out comes something else. And if you're dealing with predictability, you can't have randomness. The most you can do is to make values look random statistically. And making values look random depends little on the computer but rather on the starting input, the SEED, and how you get it. For that, you rely less on computers and more on the randomness inherent in the physical world.

There are even websites that offer randomness-from-the-physical world as a public service. The Fourmilab Hotbits site (www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits) uses a Geiger counter connected to an isotope of Krypton-85 to randomly generate numbers which are then delivered (safely) to your computer. A truly far-out method by Silicon Graphics actually uses, of all things, lava lamps (their groovy site is www.lavarand.org). One of the earliest and most famous instances of computerized randomness was done in 1955 by the RAND (no pun intended) Corporation. They created what they called the RAND tables--a book whose entire contents consisted of a million random digits listed in five-digit groups. But they determined those digits also using a physical source--a frequency pulse that effectively served as an electronic roulette wheel.

Here's where things get wild. There is a view to the physical universe , from John Archibald Wheeler to Seth Lloyd's June 2002 article in Nature (see www.nature.com/nsu/020527/020527-16.html), that sees the universe itself as a giant computer. And like any computer, that means entirely predictable rules are in play. When the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter in 1994, we could anticipate the crash in advance because of regular, predictable rules in the universe. If the physical universe is a giant computer, then it, like any computer, is rule- governed, which means predictable, which means not random. And yet, at the same time, the physical universe is the only reliable source of randomness. The Fourmilab Hotbits, the lava lamps, and the RAND tables all can confidently count themselves as random phenomena.

So how can the universe simultaneously be random and predictable? To be sure, some have attempted to resolve this contradiction. One solution articulated by physicist Brian Greene regarding randomness at the quantum level is that randomness at the quantum level is "smeared" away as one advances to ever-larger size scales. But not all randomness occurs at the quantum level; roll a pair of dice, for example. If attempts to resolve this contradiction aren't successful, maybe the entire universe is in a state of sin.

• science

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