Welcome to the web site for generating sequences of random numbers from digital images.

This site is based on the work of Pimbblet and Bulmer (2005) that used astronomical images to generate random bit streams. However, here you can upload any image and see the results of this process. Read the article by Catchpole (2004) for a good overview.

• You can upload a JPEG or TIFF image. Both of these seem to produce interesting results, though probably for different reasons.

• There is a limit of 2MB for the uploaded image file. (If you are using a modem then you might only be able to send 300KB before the web page times out.)

• Due to time limits, a maximum of 100000 pixels will be processed. If your image is bigger than this then just the central part will be used.

• Your random numbers will remain on the server indefinitely and you can revisit them. Tests are given which assess how "random" the numbers really are, and we are interested in these results for our research.

You can view an example of the output for a small image of a cluster of galaxies.

Select your image file below and click on Process to generate the random bits.

References

Pimbblet and Bulmer (2005) Random Numbers from Astronomical Imaging, Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 22 (1), 1-5.

Catchpole (2004) Holiday photos test galaxy theories, ABC News in Science.