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This tidbit about a prodigious undergraduate struck me. He double majored in math and physics and was about to start his PhD at Harvard. And in a sudden freak accident he was gone from existence. The universe will always remain unfathomable in some ways.

> In 1996, Qijia Fu of Hamilton College in New York — then just an undergraduate — proposed using germanium-based neutrino experiments to detect a CSL signature of X-ray emission. (Weeks after he submitted his paper, he was struck by lightning on a hiking trip in Utah and killed.)



Reminds me of a golden age (?) science fiction short story -- no idea the author or name -- about a spate of suicides and mysterious deaths among physicists who got too close to "the truth," externally caused by an alien force trying to keep humans in their petri dish.


Sounds like Three Body Problem. Not golden age though.


It's an Asimov story whose title I forget. The truth in question was a defense against nuclear bombs.



A&B Strugatsky wrote something similar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitely_Maybe_(novel)


That's it! Thanks!

Clearly left a mark on my memory.


Something like that was written by Strugatsky Brothers

Only it was not aliens but Universe (Sub)conscious - Homeostasis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitely_Maybe_(novel)


Seems perfectly fathomable to me.




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