The maximum age humans can live to has been revealed by scientists

Thanks to advancements in medical science, human beings are living longer than ever before, with predictions that an increasingly large cohort of today's youth will make it to 100.

William J Kole, author of The Big 100: The New World of Super-Aging, claims that by 2050, there will be around eight times more people who make it to 100 than nowadays. He also suggests that 'half of all five-year-olds alive right now' are predicted to hit triple digits.

The global life expectancy currently sits somewhere around 73 years, but it varies significantly between countries depending on various factors, including wealth.

There are even some people who've managed to make it quite far beyond the ripe old age of 100, but given medical advancements and the ability to keep people alive for longer, how much further can we go?

Unfortunately for those hoping that we'll be able to live forever, it looks like there is an upper limit to how long the human body can last.

People are living longer, but how much longer could they go? (Getty Stock Photo)

If you do everything right in terms of diet and exercise, then you can live for an extraordinarily long time, but studies on just how long a human body could last have found that there is a time limit.

One study indicates that the absolute maximum age a human being could live to is about 150 years old, as they found that human cell resilience could potentially be supported until that point - but would completely give out not long after.

Even if an actual person never makes it that far, the scientists found that it appeared to be a finishing line for the human body, which we'd struggle to break beyond.

However, other studies are pessimistic about whether we'll all eventually end up living longer as a species, as they reckon we are getting close to hitting the soft cap on human lifespan already.

This research suggested that in a best-case scenario, only about 15 per cent of women and five per cent of men would make it beyond 100, which is still a pretty good target to be hitting, even if it's not half of all current five-year-olds.

Jeanne Louise Calment made it to 122-years-old and is the verified oldest ever living human (Ian Cook/Getty Images)

However, if the absolute maximum age a human body could theoretically live to is 150 before it irreparably gives out, then most people won't come anywhere near that level.

There's also the question of how well we'll be able to care for this larger cohort of the elderly.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but older people require lots of care, and many of those in the running to become the world's oldest person aren't very active in their day-to-day lives.

The verified oldest person ever to live was French woman, Jeanne Louise Calment, who made it 122 years and 164 days before she died in 1997, having been born in 1875.

We'll have to wait and see if her record is ever broken.