Generating Power from the Expansion of the Universe?

Question

Seeing as expansion is constantly accelerating, would it ever be possible to generate power from this phenomenon?

Surely, there must be something driving this acceleration, something tangible...

Answer 1

To the best of my understanding of how the universe is unfolding I'd have to say.......no.
Every point in our universe appears to be perpetually moving away from every other point in the universe.
Maybe if you could rope a local star (or any other extraterrestrial body of significant mass) and supply it with an endless cable (it would have to be endless because you'd never get the other end back) that you could feed through a pulley attached to a generator.....but how realistic is that?
Maybe if you could stay one step ahead of our universe,and somehow get "outside" of it you could take advantage of the outward "pressure" or momentum you could harness that.
But that's even more unrealistic.

Answer 2

The problem with this can be related back to the laws of thermodynamics, it is similar to the analogy of sticking a pipe in the ocean to extract energy. The problem is that there is no gradient that exists. In order for energy to flow and hence, generate power, there must be a high to low gradient for the energy to flow. Along this flow you extract work to generate power. It boils down to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, more particularly, the Kelvin-Planck statement that basically says you can't extract work from a particular source with only a single thermal reservoir. Hope this helps.

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The analogy to sticking a pipe in the ocean is obviously a simplified explanation that is commonly used that i'm sure you've heard of ;). As for the reverse statement below, that is simply the Clausius statement corollary of the 2nd Law which is equivalent to the KP statement.

Answer 3

Sounds too paradoxical to work.

However I take strong exception to EngMartin. He compared the unliklihood to 'sticking a pipe in the ocean', saying that wouldn't work because there is no gradient.

He is completely wrong. There is a serious gradient in deep water, that of cold and hot water. The principle was quite successfully applied by TRW in the eighties, who built experimental oceanic thermal gradient generators in the Golf of Mexico. They worked really quite well; a very promising technology, as it was reported; and so then I suppose a threat to the oil, gas coal and nuclear guys who run everything. The technology was back-burnered and mostly forgotten.

Answer 4

Yes. It is possible by utilizing the supermassive gravity energy converter. My theory is that by converting the gravitational energy emitted by the dark matter in the universe, we can get an abundant source of free energy floating around in the physical molecular level in the tenth dimension of the universe, which is only exist in the subatomic level of atoms with the electrons removed and protons solely exist emitting a dense amount of relative free gravitational energy.

Answer 5

Kinda the opposite...

The universe is expanding AND cooling...In thermodynamics we call it Entropy...

The only way to reverse Entropy is through Work which is the application of energy...So we kinda need power to reverse the process

Sorry