Jess Battison
Let’s not even be all dreamy and tip-toe around it, we’re all going to die one day.
No matter how much you insist you’re capable of living forever, you’re obviously not. Time will eventually get the best of all of us but that’s not to say we can’t stick around for a while before then.
According to Guinness World Records, the oldest person alive is Maria Branyas Morera at the age of 117 with a Brit recently declared as the world’s oldest bloke at 111 years old.
So, look, there’s hope for all of us as humans are clearly capable of hanging round on the planet for quite some time. But just how long is it actually possible for us to live?
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Well, based on the fact humans are living longer than ever before, scientists have given an answer for how long it will ever be possible for humans to stay alive.
Although, it’s tricky to say exactly because so many proposed ‘maximum human lifespans’ have changed through the decades.
Richard Faragher, University of Brighton Professor of Biogerontology, writes in a study that ‘in 1921 it was demonstrated that ages above 105 were impossible’.
“Estimating the limits to longevity has since been criticised because every ‘maximum limit’ to lifespan so far proposed has been surpassed,” he explained.
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For example, the oldest human ever made it to the incredible 122 years and 164 days. Jeanne Calment died back in 1997 and her record is yet to be surpassed.
And her age is the one closest to the most common age scientists reckon humans can live to.
It’s widely agreed that the current limit on our lifespans is around 120 years.
And it’s not just because of Calment’s extraordinary record that this is theorised but because of the ways in which the human body function.
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“[If we] look at how our organs decline with age, and run that rate of decline against the age at which they stop working,” Faragher wrote, “most calculations indicat[e] organs will only function until the average person is around 120 years old.”
However, that 120 mark isn’t the definite limit on us mere humans, some scientists reckon we can make it all the way up to 150 – if you’d want to be sticking around for that long, anyway.
Ken Watcher, a professor of demography at statistics at the University of California, previously told PBS: “We’re seeing death rates, among extreme ages, go down a little bit. That means we’re not coming up against a limit to lifespan.”