If you were offered the chance to live forever, would you take it?
Some people would dearly love to live as long as the universe lasts, while others think that they'd be ready to move on after their allotted time on this little chunk of rock hurtling through space is done.
There are people who have gone to extreme lengths to increase their lifespan, spending vast amounts of money and living their lives by a strict regime in order to try and reverse the aging process.
Advert
That's not really an option to the general public, who haven't got a vast fortune to blow on treatment after treatment.
Then there's the odd effects some people living in certain parts of the world seem to experience.
People living in specific spots around the world have found that they last an incredibly long time, while a man who spent 100 days living underwater thinks it de-aged him by around 20 years.
Again though, unless we all move to one of these 'blue zones' or start living under the sea it's not really a mass market solution.
Advert
However, some scientists reckon that within the next few years, perhaps at a point in the next decade, we could hit something called the 'longevity escape velocity' which means we might be able to live forever.
It's still just a theory at this stage, but the idea is that if life expectancy increases at a higher rate than the actual aging process then people will just never actually die.
If you could crank up a person's life expectancy by a couple of years each year then the grim reaper will never be able to catch up, and barring serious accidents people will just be able to keep on living.
It sounds a bit far-fetched, doesn't it?
Advert
Increasing life expectancy faster than the progression of time itself seems a tall order.
According to Insider, aging science has made some leaps and bounds in recent years as we've learned how to rejuvenate our cells and stave off the aging process to a certain extent.
People might have a 'chronological age' which keeps going up, but their 'biological age' could be halted or slowed meaning that you have the physiology of someone much younger.
Now, before you start thinking this means the world is your oyster and you'll never die, while we've managed to achieve some de-aging in other species there hasn't been any definitive example of it being achieved in humans.
Never say never though, and if it does happen you could end up living much longer than you expected.
Joe Harker