Scientists have long debated the greatest possible age of a person, with previous studies placing the limit at up to 150 years. But in the past 25 years, no one has surpassed the record for the world's oldest person, held by Jean Louise Calment, who died at age 122 in 1997.
"This has led people to argue that the maximum life span has been reached," David McCarthy(opens in new tab), an assistant professor of risk management and insurance at the University of Georgia, told Live Science.
In a new study, McCarthy and his colleagues say they've uncovered evidence that this longevity record will be broken within the next four decades. The team did not propose a maximum age that humans can live to, but rather, they used a mathematical model to project what mortality trends might look like in upcoming years.
However, not everyone agrees with the team's conclusions, experts told Live Science.
In the study, published March 29 in the journal PLOS One(opens in new tab), the scientists analyzed mortality data from hundreds of millions of people in 19 countries who were born between the 1700s and the late 1900s, up to 1969.
They tweaked an existing mathematical model to explore how the mortality rates among people ages 50 to 100 differed in people with different birth years. They then used this information to predict the ages that people may reach in the future. READ MORE...
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