We’re nowhere near reaching the maximum human life span, controversial study suggests

Published

2 years ago

March 30, 2023

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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.

Related: Scientists find species that don’t seem to age. What does it mean for humans?

In this model, mortality rates are assumed to increase exponentially beyond age 50 and then plateau at extremely old ages, McCarthy said. Such modeling can offer clues as to whether humans are nearing the maximum life span. If that were the case, you would expect any decreases in mortality rates in younger ages to be accompanied by mortality rates that increase more rapidly with age, to preserve the age limit, he explained.

The researchers found that this was generally the case among those born before 1900. However, the mortality rate trends in people born between 1910 and 1950 appear to be different. This group reached the old age-related plateau at older ages than the pre-1900s group had, and they didn’t see sudden upticks in mortality at old ages to accompany decreases in mortality seen at younger ages. This finding hints we have not reached the maximum human life span, McCarthy said.

“In most of the countries we examined, we project that the maximum age will rise dramatically in the future,” McCarthy said. “This will lead to longevity records being broken in the next 40 years or so.” RELATED STORIES—People who live to 100 have unique gut bacteria signatures

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For example, the model projects that a Japanese woman born in 1919 or later has at least a 50% chance of living to age 122 or older. And a Japanese woman born in 1940 or later has a 50% chance of surpassing age 130. (The model roughly covered the next 50 years, and didn’t predict that anyone in any country would surpass age 150 in that time.)

However, the model has a major limitation: It does not account for the biology of aging. In other words, in predicting who has a decent chance of living past age 122, the model doesn’t account for the fact that people’s cells age over time and they become more prone to age-related diseases, like cancer. It also doesn’t acknowledge how advances in medicine might extend human life span in the years to come.

“While we find this demographic analysis interesting, we have long believed that addressing basic questions about whether, when and how aging stops are best settled by research with large animal cohorts maintained under stable laboratory conditions,” Michael Rose (opens in new tab) and Laurence Mueller (opens in new tab) , professors at the University of California, Irvine, who were not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email.

“The duration of life is at its heart a biological phenomenon, not a mathematical one,” said Stuart Jay Olshanky (opens in new tab) , a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois Chicago who was not involved in the research.

McCarthy accepts these limitations, but “since the simple model we used fit historical mortality data extremely well,” he said he thinks it can still offer useful insight into future mortality patterns.

Entertainment

The 1975 star Matty Healy warns of musical ‘silence’ without small stages as he backs new UK-wide festival

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2 hours ago

July 29, 2025

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The 1975 star Matty Healy warns of musical 'silence' without small stages as he backs new UK-wide festival

The 1975 frontman Matty Healy has warned of a musical “silence” that would come without the pubs and bars that give UK artists their first chance to perform.

Fresh from headlining Glastonbury in June, Healy is backing a new UK-wide festival which will see more than 2,000 gigs taking place across more than 1,000 “seed” venues in September.

The Seed Sounds Weekender aims to celebrate the hospitality sector hosting bands and singers just as they are starting out – and for some, before they go on to become global superstars.

Healy, who is an ambassador for the event, said in a statement to Sky News: “Local venues aren’t just where bands cut their teeth, they’re the foundation of any real culture.

“Without them, you don’t get The Smiths, Amy Winehouse, or The 1975. You get silence.”

Oasis, currently making headlines thanks to their sold-out reunion tour, first played at Manchester’s Boardwalk club, which closed in 1999, and famously went on to play stadiums and their huge Knebworth gigs within the space of a few years.

GigPig, the live music marketplace behind Seed Sounds, says the seed sector collectively hosts more than three million gigs annually, supports more than 43,000 active musicians, and contributes an estimated £2.4bn to the UK economy.

“The erosion of funding for seed and grassroots spaces is part of a wider liberal tendency to strip away the socially democratic infrastructure that actually makes art possible,” said Healy.

“What’s left is a cultural economy where only the privileged can afford to create, and where only immediately profitable art survives.”

He described the Seed Sounds Weekender as “a vital reminder that music doesn’t start in boardrooms or big arenas – it starts in back rooms, pubs, basements, and independent spaces run on love, grit, and belief in something bigger.”

The importance of funding for grassroots venues has been highlighted in the past few years, with more than 200 closing or stopping live music in 2023 and 2024, according to the Music Venue Trust. Sheffield’s well-known Leadmill venue saw its last gig in its current form in June, after losing a long-running eviction battle.

In May, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced the £85m Creative Foundations Fund to support arts venues across England.

And last year, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee called for a levy on tickets to large concerts at stadiums and arenas to help fund grassroots venues, which artists including Coldplay and Katy Perry, and venues including the Royal Albert Hall, have backed.

But most seed venues – the smaller spaces in the hospitality sector that provide a platform before artists get to ticketed grassroots gigs or bigger stages – won’t qualify for the levy. GigPig is working to change this by formalising the seed music venue space as a recognised category.

“The UK’s seed venues are where music careers are born,” said GigPig co-founder Kit Muir-Rogers. “Collectively, this space promotes more music than any other in the live music business, yet it has gone overlooked and under-appreciated.”

The Seed Sounds Weekender takes place from 26-28 September and will partner with Uber to give attendees discounted rides to and from venues.

Tickets for most of the gigs will be free, with events taking place across 20 UK towns and cities including London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Leicester, Newcastle and Southampton

Technology

Samsung backs South Korean AI chip startup Rebellions ahead of IPO

Published

3 hours ago

July 29, 2025

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The Rebel-Quad is the second-generation product from Rebellions and is made up of four Rebel AI chips. Rebellions, a South Korean firm, is looking to rival companies like Nvidia in AI chips.

Rebellions

South Korean artificial intelligence chip startup Rebellions has raised money from tech giant Samsung and is targeting a funding round of up to $200 million ahead of a public listing, the company’s management told CNBC on Tuesday.

Last year, Rebellions merged with another startup in South Korea called Sapeon, creating a firm that is being positioned as one of the country’s promising rivals to Nvidia.

Rebellions is currently raising money and is targeting funding of between $150 million and $200 million, Sungkyue Shin, chief financial officer of the startup, told CNBC on Tuesday.

Samsung’s investment in Rebellions last week was part of that, Shin said, though he declined to say how much the tech giant poured in.

Since its founding in 2020, Rebellions has raised $220 million, Shin added.

The current funding round is ongoing and Shin said Rebellions is talking to its current investors as well as investors in Korea and globally to participate in the capital raise. Rebellions has some big investors, including South Korean chip giant SK Hynix, telecommunication firms SK Telecom and Korea Telecom, and Saudi Arabian oil giant Aramco.

AI chip startup Rebellions looks to raise up to $200 million ahead of IPO

Rebellions was last valued at $1 billion. Shin said the current round of funding would push the valuation over $1 billion but declined to give specific figure.

Rebellions is aiming for an initial public offering once this funding round has closed.

“Our master plan is going public,” Shin said.

Rebellions designs chips that are focused on AI inferencing rather than training. Inferencing is when a pre-trained AI model interprets live data to come up with a result, much like the answers that are produced by popular chatbots.

With the backing of major South Korean firms and investors, Rebellions is hoping to make a global play where it will look to challenge Nvidia and AMD as well as a slew of other startups in the inferencing space.

Samsung collaboration

Rebellions has been working with Samsung to bring its second-generation chip, Rebel, to market. Samsung owns a chip manufacturing business, also known as foundry. Four Rebel chips are put together to make the Rebel-Quad, the product that Rebellions will eventually sell. A Rebellions spokesperson said the chip will be launched later this year.

The funding will partly go toward Rebellions’ product development. Rebellions is currently testing its chip which will eventually be produced on a larger scale by Samsung.

“Initial results have been very promising,” Sunghyun Park, CEO of Rebellions, told CNBC on Tuesday.

South Korean AI startup Rebellions says tariffs could delay IPO by 'a little bit'

Park said Samsung invested in Rebellions partly because of the the good results that the chip has so far produced.

Samsung is manufacturing Rebellions’ semiconductor using its 4 nanometer process, which is among the leading-edge chipmaking nodes. For comparison, Nvidia’s current Blackwell chips use the 4 nanometer process from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Rebellions will also use Samsung’s high bandwidth memory, known as HBM3e. This type of memory is stacked and is required to handle large data processing loads.

That could turn out to be a strategic win for Samsung, which is a very distant second to TSMC in terms of market share in the foundry business. Samsung has been looking to boost its chipmaking division. Samsung Electronics recently entered into a $16.5 billion contract for supplying semiconductors to Tesla.

If Rebellions manages to find a large customer base, this could give Samsung a major customer for its foundry business.

Science

NISAR Launches July 30: A NASA-ISRO Satellite to Track Earth’s Changes

Published

3 hours ago

July 29, 2025

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NISAR Launches July 30: A NASA-ISRO Satellite to Track Earth’s Changes

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite, a joint Earth science mission, is now set for launch from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre. The pickup-truck-sized spacecraft was encapsulated in the nose cone of an Indian Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle and is scheduled to lift off on Wednesday, July 30 at 8:10 a.m. EDT (5:40 p.m. IST). Once in orbit, its dual-frequency radars will circle Earth 14 times a day, scanning nearly all of the planet’s land and ice surfaces every 12 days. It will provide data to help scientists monitor soil moisture and vegetation, and better assess hazards like landslides and floods.

International Collaboration and Launch Readiness

According to the official website, NISAR reflects a significant NASA–ISRO partnership. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) built the long-wavelength L-band radar, and India’s Space Applications Centre built the shorter-wavelength S-band radar. This dual-frequency design makes NISAR the first Earth satellite to carry two radar systems, underscoring the mission’s unique collaboration.

The spacecraft is now integrated into its launch vehicle at India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre. On July 28 NASA announced NISAR had been encapsulated in the payload fairing of an ISRO Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle on the pad. The GSLV is scheduled to lift off at 8:10 a.m. EDT (5:40 p.m. IST) on Wednesday, July 30.

Advanced Dual-Frequency Radar

NISAR carries a novel dual-frequency radar system. The satellite’s instruments operate at L-band (25 cm) and S-band (10 cm) wavelengths. The longer L-band waves can penetrate forests and soil to sense moisture and land motion, while the shorter S-band waves pick up fine surface details like vegetation moisture and roughness. This combination lets NISAR detect both large-scale and fine-scale changes.

From orbit, NISAR will circle Earth 14 times per day, scanning nearly all land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. Its data will track changes like the advance or retreat of polar ice sheets and slow ground shifts from earthquakes, and will also aid agriculture and disaster planning by helping monitor crops and prepare for floods and hurricanes.