Shoes left outside the door indicate that scientists at Australian National University's Quantum Optics lab are working inside.
Dust is the enemy of the various lasers and gadgets within, connected with wires and cables to boxes and computers.
For 10 years, a small experiment in this lab has been responsible for the most popular random number generator in the world.
Randomness is actually very important for many applications, explains ANU Professor of physics Ping Koy Lam.
"Applications range from modelling complex systems to artistry, even deciding on specific colours and fabrics or whatever the the art pieces requires."
Creating true randomness is more complicated that it may seem.
The most simple way of generating a random outcome is tossing a coin or dice. However, a bias could be introduced if one side is weighted.
One way of solving this problem is to create a numerical algorithm, but this has a certain structure to it which after a long time will reveal certain patterns.
Professor Koy Lam said people are turning to what physicists call entropy to generate randomness, that is exploiting a disorder in nature.
"The underpinning feature of quantum physics is that, that there is this intrinsic randomness that no matter how carefully you consider the particular situation, you can't predict the randomness.
"So we use this form of randomness and we will argue that it is the purest form of randomness to generate our random numbers."
A coil of wires attached to a small gold box contains a beam of laser that is measuring the noise in a vacuum.
This noise is converted into binary code to create the sequence of random numbers.
"The quantum theory basically tells us that in empty space, you still have the virtual particles forming and disappearing and there's still quite a lot of dynamics involved. And that's what we're seeing. And I think that's that's why people are quite fascinated that from nothing comes this sequence of infinite random numbers."
Between 2012 to 2020, the ANU Quantum Random Number Generator processed about 300 million requests from more than 70 countries.
Last year alone there were 2.4 billion requests.
Research fellow Dr Aaron Tranter has been working on a project to host the generator on Amazon Web Services in a bid to recoup some of the running costs from heavy users.
People can get up to 100 requests per month for free, with up to a kilobyte of numbers per request. The pricing scheme can give users access to 100 requests per second.
"One of the big applications that we're looking at at the moment is actually smart contracts on blockchains for example," Dr Tranter said.
He said Australia had a relatively big quantum industry with several quantum computing companies starting up.
"This is just another tool to add to that sort of repertoire. And it's good that we can we can do this in Canberra, there's obviously a lot of government bodies here who might be interested in this kind of thing. There's also just a lot of general users."
Professor Koy Lam said some people like the idea the the universe is telling them to do something.
"There was a one very interesting case of a parent who actually wrote to me and said he made use of the randomness to decide the name of his daughter."
