By Mads Sejer Nielsen and translated by LeeAnn Iovanni, AAU Communication and Public Affairs. Photo: Ida Maria Jensen, AAU.

To have an article about supernovae and neutron stars published in one of the world's most renowned scientific journals is not commonplace for anyone, but to achieve it as a bachelor’s student is simply unheard of.

Nevertheless, this has happened to five young students from Aalborg University. Their project has recently been featured in the prestigious Nature journal.

- I knew it was within their capabilities, but it was completely surprising to me how they managed to do such strong work in their bachelor’s project. It is completely unheard of for bachelor’s students to appear in a top tier journal, and it testifies to their solid work and efforts, says Thomas Tauris, professor in Astrophysics and co-author on the article.

- I was used to guiding students individually and, admittedly, a bit skeptical of the AAU model with group work before I came here. Fortunately, all my concerns were proven wrong. Now, I understand why AAU is consistently ranked as Europe's top Engineering University.

Something we have pursued

The five students Claudia Larsen, Hans Christian Gjedsig Larsen, Casper Christian Pedersen, Jonatan Tøffner-Clausen and Peter Nørgaard Thomsen are looking forward to seeing their article published in Nature. They point out that Aalborg University's distinctive problem-oriented project work in groups has produced particularly good results here.

They highlight that Aalborg University's distinctive approach, involving problem-oriented project work in groups, has yielded exceptionally positive results.

- It's unique to be allowed to work in this way, and it's something we’ve pursued. To see it turn into something, that's super cool, even if it seems completely surreal to us. It's hard to believe how big this really is, says Hans Christian Gjedsig Larsen.

An ordinary supernova

The five bachelor’s students looked at neutron stars and supernovae – more specifically, they looked at postulations by other researchers about a specific neutron star formed in a supernova in a binary star system far out in space.

In short, a supernova is a tremendous explosion that occurs when a star of a certain size collapses under its own gravity at the end of its life. Such an explosion can end up creating a neutron star which is an extremely dense and compact remnant of the star that has undergone the supernova explosion.

The international researchers, who have now been disproved by the five students, postulated – in an article published in the same journal Nature – that the neutron star with the strange name Be-star/X-ray binary SGR 0755−2933 (CPD −29 2176) was formed in an ultra-stripped supernova, which is a special and rare phenomenon.

But it turns out – after extremely precise calculation by the five students – that the neutron star was not produced in an ultra-stripped supernova, but in an ordinary supernova.

- It's not that we wanted to be at odds. It feels a bit 'wrong', but we went in and looked at the physics and tested it on the systems, and then we came up with a kind of correction. When you do the math again, we can see that it is certainly not an ultra-stripped supernova, says Hans Christian Gjedsig Larsen.

An ultra-stripped supernova occurs when the star that explodes at the end of its life cycle is largely a bare metal core. These rare supernovae thus come from massive stars that have previously lost all their outer layers via multiple mass transfer processes to a neighbouring star (for example, a compact object such as a neutron star or a black hole) in a dense binary star system.

Based on their work, Claudia Larsen, Hans Christian Gjedsig Larsen, Casper Christian Pedersen, Jonatan Tøffner-Clausen and Peter Nørgaard Thomsen could conclude their bachelor’s programme with a grade of 12.