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Dark Energy saving the world

In theory, dark energy be used to generate electricity. Given its apparent abundance, this could provide rather a lot (perhaps too much) clean energy. Has any research been conducted on this or any other practical applications for dark energy? (other than repelling galaxies ;)

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Peter Lawrey
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    The goal of research right now is to find out what dark energy is. And by "what is dark energy?", we really mean "why do observations suggest that the expansion of the universe is accelerating?" Dark energy does not bear any resemblance to electrical energy that we know of. – Mark Eichenlaub Dec 16 '10 at 22:31
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    I fear the downvotes were people's way of saying "no it can't be done," where for some reason they confused what votes mean. It certainly is a valid question that can be addressed, so +1. –  Dec 08 '12 at 04:28
  • @manishearth - when two questions are exact duplicates and when one question had been asked in 2010 and the other question in 2012, I don't think it is correct to close the 2010 question as an exact duplicate of the new question. In physics terms, that is reverse causality. Please reconsider your action. – FrankH Dec 10 '12 at 13:55
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    @FrankH: In this case, the newer one is (1) Much better phrased, (2) Has a much better answer. So it's fine to close it in the reverse order. If it was closed in the other way, we risk redirecting users from good content to bad. Duplication isn't a causal phenomenon--it's not like the OP read a previous question and posted a dupe. – Manishearth Dec 10 '12 at 14:01
  • http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/55251/opinions-on-closing-an-older-question-as-a-duplicate-of-a-newer-question – Manishearth Dec 10 '12 at 14:06

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Dark energy is not really an energy in the common sense and there absolutely is no project to produce electricity via dark energy. Dark energy is most probably a mistake in our calculations. Even if it is not so, the nature of dark energy is currently so far from our grasp that there is no way, even theoretically, to generate energy from dark energy yet.

Cem
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    "most probably"? Whence comes this assessment? – Eric Zaslow Dec 16 '10 at 22:58
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    My personal thoughts about the issue. – Cem Dec 16 '10 at 23:31
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    So it turn out that dark energy is rather like ether (the medium light was thought to travel through) – Peter Lawrey Dec 18 '10 at 10:08
  • Well it didn't turn out to be anything yet. It is still thought to exist as an external additional force speeding up the expansion of the universe. Let's just say dark energy is the gap between the theoretical results for the expansion of the universe, and the observational results. – Cem Dec 18 '10 at 22:52
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    I believe there is actually a sensible question lurking here (after editing), that the accepted answer is basically incorrect, and that the question should be reopened with some editing. While we are not sure what dark energy is, the simplest model which fits all the data is a cosmological constant. This leads to an expanding universe, in such a situation energy is not obviously conserved, and the question of whether the expansion could be turned into other forms of energy is not pseudoscience. See e.g. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/02/22/energy-is-not-conserved/ – pho Dec 21 '10 at 01:11
  • @Jeff Well it still does not seem too convincing, but I'll open it. –  Dec 21 '10 at 09:16
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    Of course I don't think there is any practical way to use dark energy, but it seems like an interesting question of principle to me. – pho Dec 21 '10 at 14:15