Called the Lévy walk (or in some cases the Lévy flight) after mathematician Paul Lévy, it is a type of random wandering that occurs in nature in a wide variety of ways, from predators searching for food to economic, microbiological, chemical processes to climate change. In their latest research, Dániel Kincses, Márton Nagy and Máté Csanád, researchers from the Department of Atomic Physics and the Astro- and Particle Physics Programme of Excellence (TKP) at ELTE, have shown that the motion of particles in high-energy nuclear collisions can also be described as Lévy walks, confirming the interdisciplinary nature of the phenomenon.

The "needle in the haystack" discovery of a powerful explosion from a mysterious unknown object outside our galaxy has excited astronomers. It went unnoticed for years within a vast, two decade-long archive of observations by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, before being unearthed by a new paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Astronomers led by Stanford University and Harvard believe the "remarkable" cosmic explosion could either be the first X-ray burster ever discovered in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a rare flare from a magnetar – one of the most mysterious objects in the universe – or something entirely new and unheard of.

In a paper published in National Science Review, an international team of scientists found a significant decline of downward surface solar radiation (DSSR) from 1959 to 2014. Greenhouse gases (GHGs) and anthropogenic aerosols contributed equally to the weakening of the DSSR and the role of GHGs was more significant after 1979. Whether DSSR would continue to decrease in the future is highly dependent on emission policies. The implementation of relatively lower aerosols and CO₂ emissions will help to curb the weakening of DSSR and provide a key guarantee for a smooth transition from traditional fossil energy sources to a cleaner one.

In a paper published earlier this month in Physical Review Letters, a team of physicists led by Jonathan Richardson of the University of California, Riverside, showcases how new optical technology can extend the detection range of gravitational-wave observatories such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, and pave the way for future observatories.