"Time" not a dimension.

[Zenith]

This is an interesting article, new research suggests that measurements of time are not measurements of a dimension but of the numerical order of events in space:

"The concept of time as a way to measure the duration of events is not only deeply intuitive, it also plays an important role in our mathematical descriptions of physical systems. For instance, we define an object’s speed as its displacement per a given time. But some researchers theorize that this Newtonian idea of time as an absolute quantity that flows on its own, along with the idea that time is the fourth dimension of spacetime, are incorrect. They propose to replace these concepts of time with a view that corresponds more accurately to the physical world: time as a measure of the numerical order of change."

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-scie...nsion.html

I also believe that time is the order of events, and that that's all. We did not create time, we invented it. There is no "beginning of time" and "end of time". Perhaps this idea with time being something as an object or another dimension draws from SF movies and imagination with time-traveling, portals in time, etc. which I believe are impossible (after all, we did not prove "time" to be an object or something).

Numerical order of things seems to be an artifact of the perception of time, and does not address at all the fundamental nature of time. Why for example do the numerical order not count backwards? What explains why appearently truly random events like radioactive decay is still perceived as an ordered series of events?

Why do the numerical order not count backwards? Well, I think it's like saying "why do we count 1, 2, 3, 4 and not -1, -2, -3, -4". It's we who invented the counting. If there is no "time" like an object, an entity or a dimension, then it's just events, one after another. As about the second question, I don't understand it too well, what it has to do with "time".

What happens then is that the travelling twin "sees" the home twin age very quickly when he turns around, because his definition of simultaneity with the unmoving twin changes when he lorentz boosts to the return frame. The travelled twin will be younger than the twin that stayed on earth.

From what I've read from there, it seems that atomic clocks were used. So the question is, what if something influences in some way the atomic clock? Isn't that easier to believe than to say that the time itself has been influenced?

P.S. I do not have advanced knowledge of physics, so if I did a big mistake or something, I expect you to understand.