Thanks for the replies man, it's really refreshing to hear someone else's views when you can't stop thinking about things like this, even if no one will ever know for sure. I think one of the biggest problems when considering the rate of expansion of the universe is that we have no idea where we are in it! Now, I'm fairly sure this is completely wrong, so by all means correct me, but assuming the density of beyond the edge of the universe is 0, ie nothing there resistance wise, then there are only two forces that matter; the initial force, or Big Bang, and the gravitational pull from matter within the universe. The force of gravity is inversely proportional to the distance between two masses, meaning it's a negative exponential, but will always be there. This means that in theory the universe must be slowing down, (the Big Crunch theory right? ) now I don't know whether this is an original theory, or whether it has been hypothesised/proven, but it just occurred to me that if all matter was created in the Big Bang, then beyond the universe is a vacuum, hence the difference in density will exert another,previously unconsidered force ( calling it V), effectively 'pulling' the universe outward, like gas filling an empty room. As the gravitational pull decreases, there will be a point where g decreases to a lesser magnitude than 'v'. When this happens the rate of change of acceleration of the universe will start to increase ( it already has but probably not for these reasons).
*SORRY ABOUT THE MONUMENTAL LENGTH, SEEMS PROFOUND :D
Time dilation only becomes 'significant' to humans at around 0.5 x The speed of light. However, any dilation is important when considering the length of the evolutionary process to intelligent life; time may only pass (relatively) 1% faster for us than more rapidly accelerating galaxies (but still not even close to C), but that means their equivalent of the dinosaurs wouldn't have even evolved yet!
Anyways , if you read this far, I'm almost definitely wrong, and if I have sounded like I'm correcting or annoying you, that was in no way my intention when I wrote this, I just get wide eyed when I think about stuff like this =o
Peace, love and think about this next time you have a boring few minutes