united-states california
Are there any laws against shrinking the Moon and claiming it as your personal property?
<p>Suppose I use a shrink-ray to shrink the Moon. And then I take the Moon to my house and use the Moon as a centerpiece on my table or something.</p>
<p>By &quot;stealing the Moon,&quot; have I broken any law?</p>

<p>You have no right to take the moon, by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Outer Space Treaty 1967</a>.</p>
<p>Article II of the treaty explicitly forbids you from claiming a celestial body such as the Moon or a planet as your own territory, whether by declaration, occupation, or &quot;any other means&quot;.</p>
<p>That would include &quot;by shrink-ray&quot;.</p>

<h2>The laws of nuclear physics can't be violated.</h2>
<p>To <em>shrink</em> the moon, you [human!] need to remove atoms, because you [human] can not pack them much denser than they already are. So you need to pretty much vaporize most of the moon to remove it. To turn the moon into dust, you need something equivalent in the order of <a href="https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/8952/25822">3 times 10 to the power of 13 megatons of TNT</a>. In turn, this means there is only one way to get that power at all: Nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>Currently, there are about 13 890 nuclear warheads in operational condition, a considerable down from the 65 000 in 1986s. But would they suffice? Let's estimate that the average nuclear weapon is designed to be somewhere between 10 and 25 Megatons. So let's ballpark that at 17.5 megatons. Times the number of warheads... 243 075 Metagons now and  1 137 500 Megatons in the height of weapons prolification. Even in 1986 that was about 9 magnitudes too little to do the feat you want to have only a chunk of moon left for your kitchen table: you'd need the nuclear arsenal of <strong>264 million</strong> Earths in the year 1984.</p>
<h2>Legal problems trying it</h2>
<p>You may not own nuclear weaponry as a private person in <strong>any</strong> jurisdiction. Owning one could get you charged with owning nuclear material you are not allowed to have, or even attempted mass murder, because what else do you want to do with such a device? So we are looking at life imprisonment is on the line here.</p>
<p>The attempt to acquire it is usually leading directly high treason against the owner of weapons. Of the top 5 owners of nuclear weapons, the biggest 3 have the death penalty, but one of them doesn't execute it currently. So, once caught procuring the needed weapons or their materials, the chance that you get a life sentence is almost guaranteed. I don't say if, but once, because with the sheer amount and manufacturing of weapons needed (which is more than there is material for on Earth by the way), detection is inevitable.</p>
<p>Next, you are committing various other crimes, like transporting nuclear material, spaceflight without a license of unregistered aircraft (Missiles to the moon) and more.</p>
<h3>If you succeed...</h3>
<p>Next, let's say you <em>do</em> succeed somehow. What's then? Well, you just destroyed the moon to have a chunk yourself. The impact of the lack of moon is changing the pattern of tides and as a result weather. The direct result would be a death toll in the order of billions, globally. So <strong>all</strong> states can go and snatch you and charge you with all the deaths that happened in their respective countries as a result of you taking the moon. I expect about 55 countries want to execute you for depraved murder, the other 140 verdicts will be to keep you locked up forever.</p>
