
Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation Power Spectrum as a Random Bit Generator - aburan28
http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.02511
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Inthenameofmine
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
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?

~~~
Inthenameofmine
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.

~~~
saganus
Very nice explanation. Thanks a lot!

So if I understand correctly this would be somewhat akin to having a
"universal clock" that is ever increasing, and that can be read/seen by anyone
(like you said, universally). So you only need to know the "time" on the
clock, when you do something, so that afterwards you can verify that indeed
the "timestamp" happened.

Is this somewhat of a correct analogy? At least that's how I understood it.

In any case, it does seem interesting to be able to have a universally
verifiable time keeping "signal". I'm guessing there must be other uses as
well.

~~~
Inthenameofmine
> So if I understand correctly this would be somewhat akin to having a
> "universal clock" that is ever increasing, and that can be read/seen by
> anyone (like you said, universally). So you only need to know the "time" on
> the clock, when you do something, so that afterwards you can verify that
> indeed the "timestamp" happened.

As long as you where online during that time, or as long as you trust a third
party to record the CMB radiation for you, yes.

The really cool thing is that this wold apply not just anywhere in the
universe, but because nothing travels faster than light any communication
being done between blockchains between planets would always be in sync. The
CMB Radiation simply reaches the other planet at the same time the
communication does.

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judegomila
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
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.

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j_m_b
This is along the lines of hotbits
[https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/](https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/)

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

~~~
woliveirajr
Why use satellites when you can use Microwave Oven Leaks?

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kenesom1
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-
locati...](http://vlf.stanford.edu/research/global-lightning-geo-location)

~~~
okramcivokram
There's a great project blitzortung.org that I think uses that technology to
create a real time map of lightnings.

~~~
kenesom1
That's awesome!

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nayuki
What advantage does this technique have over measuring radioactive atoms?

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

~~~
bazzargh
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-uni...](http://www.tor.com/2014/09/23/the-three-body-problem-
the-universe-flickers/)

~~~
barkingcat
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!

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AdamN
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)).

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

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ape4
This time "awesome" really applies.

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PaulHoule
"We're on a mission from God"

