“So, can you tell me, if a civilization exists in a different galaxy out there, and they don’t have a sun such as ours and a planet such as ours, would they have figured out a way to tell time, and would they have such things as day and night and hours/minutes/years?”
While time is part of the laws of physics, I’m suggesting that the laws of physics only appear to be fundamental to the universe. Rather, I believe they are properties of conscious entities. If this is the case, the construct of time is an element of conscious thought and would therefore not require any particular environment in order for it to elapse. It is true, however, that the realm of space-matter-time-and-energy is useful for giving us a frame of reference in order to keep up with things like time.
“If humans needed to leave the planet because it was about to be destroyed, how would those travelers keep time, it they’re no longer dependent on Earth rotating every 24 hours and the planet making revolutions around the sun every ‘year’?”
Humans are adapted to earth-time and earth gravity and other conditions here. We would probably need to maintain a sense of time to avoid going insane. This can easily be done through computers and simulated environments. But, if the hope of ever returning to earth is lost, these would be mere window dressing. Future generations might adapt to new environments.
“Time, as we know it, is the measurement of how long it took for those events to occur, based on our perception of our locality in the solar system.”
True, but, oddly enough, it has been confirmed that time that is built into the physical properties of the space-matter-time-and-energy realm is relative based on things like the velocity you travel or the strength of the gravitational forces acting on you. So, if you traveled away from earth at extremely high speeds (relative to the speed of light) and then returned to earth, you might have aged a few days while everyone here has experienced many years.
“Are dogs and elephants and dolphins and all other forms of life, aware of ‘time’?”
They experience time.
“We don’t have any other means of measurement based on universal time or galactic time. In fact, universal and galactic time measurements don’t exist.”
There is no absolute time because time is relative. However, time is a property of the physical universe. So, we can expect time to be operating everywhere in the observable universe. It just isn’t synchronized.
Animals don’t know time, and what they experience is life, with no account of what’s next or what was or what is. Time is has no meaning to them. It’s humans who have the ability to measure change and then call it time.
Meanwhile, you’re still using the definitions of time as written in science textbooks. Time is an abstract. We don’t really know if time is the fourth dimension or any dimension at all. We take measurements based on what we know of our neighborhood in the universe. We don’t know if time is useful for measuring the past or present or future events out there in the rest of the universe.
Time is relative to us, but perhaps not to the rest of the universe.