UT Austin’s Scott Aaronson and his former postdoctoral researcher, Shih-Han Hung, played a key role in demonstrating the first practical use of quantum computing: generating and verifying truly random numbers. Their certified randomness protocol, tested on a 56-qubit quantum computer, ensures outputs cannot be manipulated—a major advancement with applications in cryptography, security, and fairness. This milestone, published in Nature, proves quantum computers can tackle tasks beyond the reach of classical supercomputers, pushing the field closer to real-world impact.
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