Hi Cougar

Again the issue of the rate of expansion pops up. This is one of the mistakes in astronomy that I discussed earlier. It is a mistake that is allowed to continue in popular press, but is horribly misleading. I think I will address this issue in my web site just to clear things up.

The evidence of the change in the rate of expansion from the constant locally observed rate is from very distant high red shift type 1a supernovas. This departure from linear reveals the rate of expansion in the past, not the present.

Again, the main problem is the improper (my opinion admittedly) use of a coordinate system involving time. If one measures events historically, with the beginning of time representing the origin, and all events are described from this type of reference frame, the universe will be found to be decelerating.

Try it your self

take a piece of graph paper with the y axis representing v and the x axis representing time (or distance away based upon the speed of light).

If you plot the velocity of galaxies as a function of time, you will find that you end up with a curve that is becoming less steep. This corresponds to deceleration. (Note most of the published rates of expansion made by the current teams determining the rate of expansion swap the x and y axis due to the accuracy allowed for velocity measures associated with red shifts, and the inaccuracy of the distance measures.)

Yours,

Snowflake