Do you think humans can live to be 1,000 years old?
When we come up with this topic, a large percentage of people think that this is just a human fantasy. This phrase is what scientist Aubrey Gray once made in a speech.
When he made this point, many scientists agreed with him.
Observing our current human age, human lifespan can increase by about three months almost every year. I don't know if you have found a phenomenon, around us, the number of centenarians seems to be increasing.
It's clear that those who were 60 years old 20 years ago and 60 years old now are two completely different states.
Of course, this may also have a lot to do with the social development in the past 20 years. Most of the people in the past were hard laborers, and their bodies were relatively expensive.
Aubrid Gray calculates that the number of centenarians will reach around 1 million after about 2030.
So far, the age of the longest-lived elderly people in the world is 122 years old.
It seems that this age is a complete joke compared to the 1,000 years old mentioned in the speech. The difference between the two is hundreds of years.
Of course, Aubrid Gray's remarks are not imaginary. Rather, there is indeed a certain scientific basis.
Scientist Heflik has discovered the root cause of human aging through experiments. Human cells divide about 50 times in a lifetime. When the human body came to the end of its life, scientists found that the person's cells would not continue to divide.
That is to say, the most fundamental reason for the lifespan of our human body is still determined by the number of cell divisions. If you want to stay young forever, the number of natural cell divisions cannot be stopped.
In 2015, Aubride Gray experimented to find a close correlation between telomeres and the number of cell divisions of chromosomes in cells.
He found that the more cells in the human body divide, the more the telomeres of the chromosomes shortened.
Once the cell divides, the chromosomal telomeres also shorten a little.
When the chromosomal telomeres are shortened to nothing, the number of cell divisions is just about 50 times, and it will not continue to divide.
So Aubrid Gray believes that if we humans want to solve the current lifespan problem, the problem that needs to be solved at the moment is how to prevent the phenomenon of chromosomal telomeres from becoming shorter. Or how to find a way to prolong the shortening of chromosomal telomeres?
If chromosomal telomeres disappear for about 1,000 years, then we humans are likely to achieve our wish to live for up to 1,000 years.
Of course, today's medicine is only a preliminary stage, and prolonging the shortening time of chromosomal telomeres is only a goal. Achieving this goal may not be until many years later.