How can you tell time in space?

That was the simple question asked to me by a colleague.  Occasionally, trivia questions or the sort will be past around my office, I guess to muse or redirect focus from the mundane business of work.  My answer was "time is abstract, it's based on the culture and it's people."  In the back of my mind, I wanted to say time is also relative, but I was already being overly technical.  I didn't want to go overboard and define it by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.  If you don't look at the clock, your mind doesn't know what time it is because your brain doesn't keep track of counting upwards of one second, every time a second passes.  If you were out in space or out in the jungle without a timing mechanism and your brain lost track of counting, you'd lose the exact time it is.  And determining time by day then night with the sun or moon's positioning like a good mountain man is only an approximation.

Counting is a very basic function a normal brain does.  The first person who applied counting to time, I guess you could consider the first philosopher to develop the calendar. Whether you're in a Roman or Lunar culture of calendar, the calendar started with seconds.  Duh! you say to this basic concept: seconds leads into minutes and minutes leads into hours and hours leads into days, then weeks and years and so forth.  But it started with applying counting in the concept of time.

Back to the original topic: my colleague said "you can't tell can you?"  So basically what he is asking is how can you tell the Roman counting system applied to time passing in space?  Without a counting mechanism or your mind having perfect counting and tracking it, the answer is no.  Time is a system created and exist only in our minds based on a system.  Time is based on a point of reference.  They say dinosaurs existed thousands of years B.C. (Before Christ).  Time is changed based on the region you are in.  The United States has four time zones.  It's 8:00am Eastern Time Zone as I am writing this right now, but in Dubai it's 4:00pm.  Time can also be changed based on the season, Daylight Savings Time is coming to an end in a week.

Space can be established as another realm and depending how far out in space, in it one can detach from the system of time set in earth.  Technically, without a timing mechanism (like a clock) or your brain tracking every second, you would not be able to tell what time it is.  The only way would be to find a new method of counting upwards by one in seconds from that time you left earth to maintain the Roman time system.  In that aspect, yes there is away to find out what time it is in space: only if you develop a new system to keep the region of time you are from in earth.  The answer to the question: "How can you tell time in space?", is that you cannot if you don't have either a clock that still functions from earth, superior counting in your head or someone transmitting that time to you in space from earth.  The yes to that question is if you develop a new system of timing away from earth's timing system.  Hypothetically, if a new born wanted to find what time it was and he didn't have one of the above mentioned, he would not be able to find time on earth but he would be able to create his own timing system and even change the cycle of time, say counting up by two equals a minute.  In the same concept, someone who is secluded in the jungle from civilization and decided to ignore societies time structure would have time totally eradicated.  Say in the morning the volcano he sleeps under, because it's warmer there, vibrates at what our culture deems as 8:00am one morning and 8:30am the next morning, the outcast would still consider it 8:00am every morning as the volcano vibrates because he is ignoring societies time structure.  The outcast could deem sleeping right when the sun sets, but sometimes during the season the sun sets at 6:00pm and others at 9:00pm, he would still deem sunset everyday at 6:00pm because he is ignoring the Roman time system.  Not only is the answer to my colleague's question yes and no, but he asked a question not so simple to just answer yes or no because time is abstract and relative. Time in space does exist, it is just abstract like in any region in comparison and relative depending on the type of system you compare it to.

---I am employed, for now, so my timing system is relative to the time I leave work and counting upwards by one until my ass has to be at work the next morning deemed when my company says I have to be in.  If I were unemployed work time wouldn't apply to my system of waking up because I wouldn't have that requirement to be at work at a certain time.  My relativity to waking up in counting up by one in seconds would increase if I were unemployed.  Einstein states it another way...

---"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it's only a minute. But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it's two hours. That's relativity." -Albert Einstein

---If you were in space a foot from the sun, based on how most time systems are set by the position of the sun, every second would be daylight and you could say every second is 6:00am.  Every life span would be a second also because you'd be burnt up.

---Time is a very important system to epoch events in our culture, time determines change and how something can last, even in space.  He asked a very valid question.