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Asked by to Claire, Ian, Sergey, Vicky, Zena on 25 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Sergey Lamzin answered on 25 Jun 2014:
Technology is trying to extend human lifespan more and more each time.
Though no medical advances can stop the inevitable: our universe will collapse one day. So, no, no one will live really forever even if his/her mortal body can live up to the point of the end of the world.
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Ian Simpson answered on 25 Jun 2014:
There’s been quite a bit of debate about whether we might reach a step-change in life expectancy. That people will in a relatively short space of time start living an awful lot longer. If we do manage to address the big ones, at least in developed countries cancer, heart disease and diabetes then that might be a realistic possibility.
That then raises the question of brain diseases like dementia where the quality of life and health of the brain is the major cause of death. Again this might be addressed leaving the possibility of very long life spans.
The big problem then of course is the explosion in the population on Earth, current predictions based on existing birth/death rates suggest resources are going to become highly stretched in a very short time frame as it is. If we have large numbers of people living a lot longer we would likely reach crisis very quickly.
So living forever very unlikely, but if possible we would almost certainly need to colonise other places in space to accommodate us all !
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Claire Shooter answered on 25 Jun 2014:
There’s a theory that some reptiles could potentially live forever: as we age the pattern of genes we have switched on changes, and our cell division slows down. In crocodiles we don’t see either of these processes occurring – they just keep growing and growing and may not actually die naturally! They do get killed by injury and disease, fortunately, which is why the world is populated by humans and not godzilla crocodiles!
Unfortunately there are many different facets to ageing and it’s unlikely we will ever find a way to stop all of them assides cryogenic freezing (and we can’t even get THAT to work properly). We will definitely live longer thanks to medical advances, but who would want to live forever, really?
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