Dark energy-A solution to Heat Death?

[Yarn]

Interstellar gas is being used up to create stars faster than it is being replenished by the venting of engorged stars and supernova. The reason for this is that while all of the gas that goes into initially forming a star is lost to the interstellar pool, only some of it is returned, because much of its matter winds up locked up in collapsed stars: white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. Hence, eventually the gas is going to run out, and eventually all the stars are going to die and not be replaced. Owing to decaying orbits, sometime after that happens they are almost all going to be eaten by the black hole that lies at the center of every galaxy.

So someday, all that will be left is a big dead universe with a bunch of blackholes in it.
(Source: The Inexplicable Universe: Unsolved Mysteries | Neil deGrasse Tyson )

String theorists think that blackholes might be creating new universes, but at anyrate, that is a pretty bleak result for our universe.

One potential solution, one endorsed by world renowned physicist Michio Akaku, is to harness the power of dark energy.

Dark energy is tearing the universe apart. It is a ubiquitious force that is slowly inflating all of space at a rate of

74.2 kilometers per second per megaparsec (error margin of ± 3.6).

It is a constant per given volume of space, it continuously causes the universes's volume to expand, hence it is continually becoming more and more powerful. HubbleSite - NewsCenter - Refined Hubble Constant Narrows Possible Explanations for Dark Energy (05/07/2009) - The Full Story

It is extremely diffuse, but it is, as far as we know, infinite. Meaning, it defies the conservation of energy. Hence, if there were an energy efficient way to collect it, it would grant you unlimited energy that you could use to do whatever you want. Since energy can be converted into matter, it would provide whatever civilization harvested it the ability to expand and survive forever.

Now, we don't really understand it very well. We don't know what is causing it. All we know are its effects. But if the model aforementioned is true, is it possible to use dark energy to save the universe? Or is it impossible to efficiently collect something that diffuse?

[minorwork]

Wasn't that energy source postulated in Atlas Shrugs?

[NoJingoLingo]

Perhaps it's dark matter that comes out of the other end of a black hole. If there are truly many universes with black holes connecting them it might explain where the energy going in goes and where the dark matter is coming from... I guess I better go get a degree in astrophysics.

[Yarn]

There are many theorized explanations for it that as of yet are not falsifiable via existing data. Hence, there is no way to isolate one theory as true. Because they cannot all be true, this means we just don't know yet.

Amongst existing theories concerning dark matter are that its source is some as of yet undiscovered type of particle or that there is no dark matter and the real explanation is that we don't have a proper understanding of how gravity works at the galactic and intergalactic scales. The existence of dark matter is postulated on the basis of the fact that stars in galaxies and galaxies in clusters of galaxies orbit around the centers of mass of their orbits much faster than is sustainable given the amount of mass around which they orbit that we can account for via vanilla phenomenom. Given what we know is there, the stars and galaxies ought to just be flung away. From the fact that they orbit stablely, we infer that there is an unknown source of mass in these systems holding them together.

There is precedent for either of these theories working. When we discovered Uranus, we infered the existence of an 8th planet from the fact that we couldn't fully explain Uranus's orbit using only those sources of mass in the Solar System that we already knew about. In fact, precise calculations using Uranus's orbit were able to accurately predict the location of Neptune, which is how we discovered Neptune.

We tried to do the same thing to explain Mercury's odd orbit. We even gave the hypothetical planet a name: Vulcan. It was prediced to be even closer to the sun than Mercury, but we couldn't find it because it doesn't exist. Instead, relativity explains Mercury's orbit.

Hence, in the case of Uranus the deviation was caused by an unknown mass source, and in the case of Mercury, the deviation was caused by the fact that we got the laws of physics wrong. Either could explain the dark matter phenomenom.

If it is caused by an unknown particle, maybe we will eventually discover it via particle accelerators. Maybe we already have. The behavior of dark matter, that of forming a halo but no accreting, seems, and this is my pet theory pulled out of my ass, consistent with neutrinos.

Energy and mass are interchangaeble. Hence it can be said that dark energy comprises 70% of the universe, dark matter comprises 26%, and normal stuff comprises 4%. If dark matter were made of neutrinos, it would lead to the question where the hell they came from because the processes by which neutrinos are made that we know about involve the production of normal stuff, hence the disparity in quantity would require an unknown means of origination for neutrinos.

The reasons why neutrinos seem plausible to me is that they don't interact with other particles except via gravity because they have no charge and, unlike neutrons, they aren't binded to particles with charge. Hence, only via direct collision can neutrinos otherwise interact with anything, and that form of interaction is extremely rare. However, they have some mass. So if they started orbiting an object, there would be nothing to slow them down, so they could just form a halo indefinitely. According to the distribution of its effects. dark matter forms halos.

[minorwork]

Does the energy in a charge field count as mass?

[Yarn]

Potential energy has mass, so I suppose so. Per instance, if you stretch a spring, you slightly increase its mass. Also, the matter that comprises gas weighs more before combustion than it does afterwards. Now, the effect is small because it takes a lot of energy to produce a little bit of mass. So it isn't really noticable in everyday circumstances. Its kind of like how time slows down when you increase your relative velocity. So if you spent your entire life in a supersonic plane, you'd live about a second longer relative to the ground.

In a charge field, you'd have to have a second charge for there to be potential energy and therefore mass associated with that potential energy.

[minorwork]

The force that deflects one proton from another, would it deflect 3 other protons with the same force on each as it had the one? Seems that charge fields must be the emission of real particles.

[Yarn]

Huh? Well, the jump in potential energy is greater with each proton added to the bunch. The first is placed without resistance. The second is resisted by the first. The third is resisted by the first and second, and the forth by the first 3.

[minorwork]

Action at a distance. How to explain it? The field, developed by Michael Faraday. But the standard model gives the field no consideration as Matter, it is a concept. Is it real? That's a philosophical, metaphysical question even. If real then the energy of the field must be considered as matter/energy or particles. Things look different from a macro level than from the quantum level though. Coulomb's Equation by Miles Mathis