SOLVED. SF novel, 80s-90s, against the SETI program, aliens destroy Earth. [s]

[Christopher]

I thought this book was called "Dark Star" but apparently not. It was written by at least one scientist who was opposed to the SETI project because once you have the technology to accelerate a spacecraft to very high speeds, it's too easy to destroy a planet. So a rational species might choose to eliminate all other advanced species it finds in order to protect itself.

The novel is set in the fairly near future when humans have several outposts in our solar system. Suddenly a large spacecraft enters our solar system at high speed and two successive waves of smaller pieces separate from the ship and slam into Earth, completely scouring the surface. The ship then hunts down all the scattered outposts while the humans scramble to find a way to hide, and fail. In the end two scientists from a submersible at the bottom of the Marianas Trench surface and are picked up by the aliens as biological samples.

[Conal]

[Christopher]

That's it! Thank you so much, this has been bugging me!