[_madmax_]

>However, for the past ~6 billion years, distant galaxies have been speeding up in their recession, and the expansion rate, though still dropping, is not headed toward zero.

Am I not getting something here or is this sentence not make sense?

[vidarh]

It makes sense if the expansion rate isn't dropping linearly and the rate of the drop is itself dropping towards zero.

[layer8]

This article explains it in more detail: https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/universe-expansion-n...

[XzAeRosho]

The rate of acceleration is slowing down, but still is accelerating.

[bonzini]

So the first derivative was already understood to remain nonzero forever[1], now we know that the second derivative probably will also remain nonzero, and the third is slowing down but still positive for the moment?

[1] IIRC in the 80s the big bang/big crunch model was preferred

[BurningFrog]

The slowing down is speeding up. What could be simpler?