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An object that is moving faster in the past than the present is decelerating.
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Ah, but that's the point!!! Our observations suggest that the universe is expanding faster NOW than it did in the past....
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Astronomers use NOW as the point of reference and this is their mistake. Any description of reality must include some kind of temporal measure of WHEN events occur. If one demarcates time by starting the clock at the moment of creation, then there is no confusion or misleading description as to whether or not space is accelerating or decelerating.
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This is one of the cruxes of GR - it does allow for the funny effects you get with reconciling distance, speed and time. Galaxies are not moving at the speed of light - but the light they emit is... Ergo we can make observations adequate to give us an accurate picture of how it is behaving in the past, and the present. Sure we have to take into account the distance a galaxy is (how far into the past we're looking) and that the act of it moving further away means light takes longer to reach us, but GR gives us the math to do just that.
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So in the very distant past the rate of expansion was even greater.
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Well no, and I think this is the problem you're having coming to terms. We observe
now the observation of these novas in the past. We are looking back in time. The trends we garner from our observation show that if we could see the light from those novae at the same time it was emitted (of course long gone by now but i think my point is clear) - acceleration is apparent.
Good discussion you have generated though - it's got me thinking!