From 10c to $US6 million! Yes, Superman was “going to change the world.” In fact, he superchanged it – a 1938 comic featuring Superman’s first appearance just sold for $US6 million at auction last Thursday, becoming the most expensive comic ever, according to Heritage Auctions, which handled the sale.

The auction house dubbed it the “most important, impactful comic book ever published,” as it introduced the world to Superman for just 10 cents an issue when it was first released 86 years ago.

“Without Superman and Action Comics No. 1, who knows whether there ever would have been a Golden Age of comics—or if the medium would have become what it is today,” Heritage Auctions Vice President Barry Sandoval said ahead of the sale.

And despite its age, this comic was still in very good condition, with rich colors and a little wear at the top. Only two other unrestored copies exist in better condition, Heritage Auctions said, and only 100 in total are estimated to survive out of the 200,000 originally printed. [read more from CNN here] Now, I must dust off my collection of 1938 comics at once!

New Zealand golfer Amelia Garvey has pulled off a remarkable feat in a US tournament, becoming the first professional to ever record an albatross, a hole-in-one and an eagle on three separate holes of a round. Competing in the final round of the Royal St. Cloud Women’s Championship on the NXXT Tour, Garvey shot a final-round 66 to finish in a share of seventh. But it wasn’t your average six-under par round. On the front nine, she began with an eagle on the par-five first hole and an ace on the par-three sixth, before recording a double-eagle albatross at the par-five 13th. According to Golf NZ, the odds of hitting an albatross (three under par) are six million-to-one. The odds of a pro golfer shooting a hole-in-one are approximately 3,000-to-one. The odds of knocking in an eagle are 350-to-one. Cumulatively, that equates to odds of 6.3 trillion-to-one!

Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have been able to witness firsthand how gold is created in our universe.

A scientific paper published last week in Nature documented a collision between two ultradense neutron stars nearly a year ago. The paper noted that the explosion, referred to as a kilonova, was the biggest ever observed. The event duration was also unprecedented, lasting 200 seconds. Most of these types of explosions last two seconds or less.

Along with measuring the gamma radiation bursts (GRB) the scientists were able to use the James Webb and Hubble telescopes to observe a flash of light emanating from the same event.

“It was thrilling to study a kilonova as we had never seen before using the powerful eyes of Hubble and JWST,” research team member and University of Rome astrophysicist Eleonora Troja told Space.com in an interview. “This is the first time we’ve been able to verify that metals heavier than iron and silver were freshly made in front of us.

According to some reports before this discovery, it was believed that long GRBs resulted from the collapse of massive stars, not from the merger of neutron stars. Scientists have noted that most common stellar exposures release enough energy to create iron, which has an atomic mass of 57 amu. However, it takes a massive amount of energy to create gold, which has an atomic weight of nearly 197 amu. [see full article here]

In New Zealand there has been much debate about reducing the number of public servants – those people employed across a range of agencies. To help define this group, here is a unique visual representation. Graphs, used well, have the power to define and explain, and mathematicians often use them in this way. You can see the original article here.

A Greek island is a Geometric wonderland. Check out this inspiring video from the BBC:

What is the largest number between 0 and 1 million that does not contain the letter ‘n’? [answer in post support]

The 2022 results are out for the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests of reading, maths and science. Here are the top ten (full result available here):

You can test yourself on some of the math questions here.

Here is the infamous SAT question that every student got wrong. Before we post the solution, what is your guess? [Answer, with explanation video link, is in Post Support]