Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2
If you want to stir things up a lot, let the comet be made of antimatter. That'll really stir up the science community, make the thing easily detectable a long way out to give time to do something about it, and have enormous military and political implications (a chance to lay hands on tons of antimatter at one cheap stroke).
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I'm fairly sure an anti-comet would be detectable *too* far out to be very interesting.
Annihilation gamma ray peaks are very distinctive. Unless I've seriously blown the calculation, a chunk of antimatter a meter across moving at a typical stellar proper motion should be hitting enough interstellar hydrogen for the annihilations to be detectable with our recent gamma ray telescopes at half a light year. We might not have more than a few thousand years warning....