This is a theme in "The Web Between the Worlds" [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Web_Between_the_Worlds
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Web_Between_the_Worlds
This novel was published almost simultaneously with The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke. Through an amazing coincidence the two novels contained many similarities. Both protagonists are engineers who have built the world's longest bridge using a machine named the "Spider", both of whom are hired to build a space elevator, and both engineers modify their Spiders to produce a crystalline fiber.
It's like the simultaneous invention of calculus. People are conduits for independently-living ideas.
Somehow all the academics in a particular field all over the world just happen to agree on a narrow set of ideas to explore next.
Most of science happens like this, yes even the Newtons and Einsteins of the world explored ideas in this narrow frontier of next ideas. There used to be exceptions in the distant past but modern science does not tolerate exceptions.
(1) hep-th had too many people chasing too few problems back then, or
(2) "scalar field with a mexican hat potential" is one of the simplest field theories you can write though it inspires all sorts of ideas like the Higgs Mechanism, Inflation, etc.
It's not talked about it much outside of research groups, but for any field, there is a small number of people who are currently pushing the boundaries, and they all read each other's papers and have a good idea of what the next question to ask is. It can often be a race to engineer an experiment that convinces the reviewers that your article should be published first. It's a sort of cooperation/competition that moves the field forward faster. These areas often move so fast that nobody even bothers to write down the current problems, it's just sort of talked about in person.
Put another way, the successful discoverers are the ones looking for their keys at the end of the streetlight: "Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that's where the light is. It has no other choice." (Chomsky). Few if anybody looking where there is no light discovers anything (even if it's sitting there in the dark), or at least, nobody believes them unless they provide significant evidence (like building a new lamp)
Always fun to see stuff written almost 2 thousand years ago about life on other planets.