Abstract
Methods/Materials
A 99-percent isopropanol cloud chamber was constructed that allowed for the observance of muons. Muon streaks were photographed as RAW files. An OpenCV-based application was written to isolate the streaks by utilizing Gaussian blur and Canny edge detection algorithms. The same application was then used to extract the x and y coordinates of the midpoints of the streaks. The Cartesian coordinates were concatenated and used as input for ten tests from the NIST Statistical Test Suite.
Results
P-values greater than .01 were considered to imply randomness. Seven of the NIST tests indicated that 128-bit numbers generated from the x and y values were random, two indicated that 3000-bit numbers were random, while one indicated that 1000-bit numbers were random.
Conclusions/Discussion
The high success rate of the statistical tests strongly suggests that the data obtained is random. Since seven tests verified the randomness of 128-bit numbers, it can be concluded that the cloud chamber can be used to generate random 128-bit numbers. This project proves the viability of this cloud chamber as a novel, cost-effective TRNG while simultaneously providing insight into the random nature of cosmic radiation. Further research will focus on the automation of the entire process, including rendering the cloud-chamber self-sustainable and optimizing the computer vision algorithms for efficiency.
This Mathematical project constructs a novel, reliable true random number generator through the utilization of muon pathways in a cloud chamber.
Science Fair Project done By Akshay Agrawal