Abstract: A method and apparatus for generating random numbers. Events characteristic of a random process are registered, and a particular time segment, from among a set of time segments, is identified based upon registration of an event within that time segment, and a value is associated based on the identified time segment. The events may be detections of a particle by a particle detector such as a photon detector. A random number is outputted based at least upon the associated value. Outputting of the random numbers may be followed by a whitening process. The source of particles may be driven to provided various specified probability distributions of values.