Quote:
Originally Posted by ravens_cry
A clue to watch out for in interstellar hunks of uranium would be that it might have a pitted, spongy look from long term bombardment with positive atoms. Also, would you, if you scanned it long enough, pick up occasional anomalous readings as an atom of the interstellar medium annihilate itself with a uranium atom? Would that be visible?
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The anomalous 511 keV gamma from positron annihilation would stand out like a sore thumb. The even higher energy gamma would be common from interstellar medium interactions also.
Larry Niven wrote a short story called Flatlander where they come across this sort of thing.