/sci/ - Science & Math

Time is just a fundamental parameter in every acceptable configuration space used to model an evolving physical system.
The configuration space is roughly the set of all the numbers you need to completely determine the status of a system. In theoretical physics, the state of the system, to be defined properly, always needs to have time specified. In this last phrase, 'time' is just what you measure on a clock, just as length is just what you measure on a meter. As long as this tools completely rule out a certain configuration, you are fine.
Then in more advanced theories you have intricate relations between this 'time' and other 'dimensions', but this does not change what these things are.