Relevant PhD comics: https://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1911

46 authors isn’t that many. Big projects necessitate many authors (e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.06209)

In high energy physics it can easily be thousands of authors, like in the ATLAS collaboration.

Turns out launching a gigantic camera into orbit and developing a photograph of the beginning of the universe takes teamwork.