http://www.firstscience.com/site/art...blackholes.asp
Martin Rees: "This elasticity in the rate of passage of time may seem
counter to our intuition. But such intuition is acquired from our
everyday environment (and perhaps, even more, that of our remote
ancestors), which has offered us no experience of such effects. Few of
us have travelled faster than a millionth of the speed of light (the
speed of a jet airliner); we live on a planet where the pull of
gravity is 1000 billion times weaker than on a neutron star. But time
dilation entails no inconsistency or paradox."

Bravo Rees bravo Martin! The twin paradox should become "the twin
consistency". Yet from time to time (not very often) the selfsame
Martin Rees has doubts and organises a private conference:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/519406/posts September 9 2001
"A GROUP of astronomers and cosmologists has warned that the laws
thought to govern the universe, including Albert Einsteins theory of
relativity, must be rewritten. The group, which includes Professor
Stephen Hawking and Sir Martin Rees, the astronomer royal, say such
laws may only work for our universe but not in others that are now
also thought to exist.....AMONG THE IDEAS FACING REVISION IS EINSTEINS
BELIEF THAT THE SPEED OF LIGHT MUST ALWAYS BE THE SAME - 186,000 miles
a second in a vacuum.....Rees, Hawking and others are so concerned at
the impact of such ideas that they recently organised a private
conference in Cambridge for more than 30 leading cosmologists."

Pentcho Valev