Represents superclusters as 'stationary' and the distance between them as what is increasing with time.

 

IMO other illustrations are much more representative of reality, but my hope is that this might provide an alternative illustration as an aid to comprehension.

I'm not sure it helps. It rather implies that space becomes increasingly curved over time which is not (as far as I am aware) the case.

It is an area in which additional aids to understanding are required (there is a thread in Specs at the moment that I think demonstrates the fallacy of taking illustrations too far) - but I agree with Strange that it risks introducing the idea of expansion increasing curvature whereas I think it tends to do the opposite if there is indeed an inherent geometry to spacetime - (Mordred? xyzt?)

The geometry of our universe is inherently flat with a consistent k constant since inflation. The key points to show is expansion that maintains the same k. Light paths being straight not curved. As well as no change in angles between measured objects.

 

3 objects in a triangle best demonstrates this as you can introduce the angle aspects.

 

Start with the flat images here then add the only change being the distance between the 3 points

 

http://cosmology101.wikidot.com/geometry-flrw-metric/

Just the top images the lower images are the other two curvatures

Page one is here and has another flat image with the triangle and graph lines simply expanding the points on the image would be another good example

 

http://cosmology101.wikidot.com/universe-geometry

The red lines on the image of the second link is the light paths. (Red triangle on a flat graph)

 

Geometry is basically an energy density descriptive of light path influence. The pressure to light path relation is extremely important in measurements.

 

A variation in curvature would influence those light paths causing distortions

If you place the clusters at each point then use a second zoomed image with no change in cluster volume that would work

Edited January 5, 201511 yr by Mordred

Thank you everyone. I'll look at the links posted and give zoomed images a shot.