So, scientist's are working on a new way of actually extending the human lifespan, as they have figured out (at least partly) what causes aging in the first place. There is an interesting scientific article on it, and I thought I would share with my friends here on GO. Article is after the jump.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anti-aging-pill-targets-telomeres
P.S.: in Off topic as aging has only a tangential connection to MV-how many versers stay in a world long enough that the people they have met grow old and die? It's usually lack of aging that affects the verser ;)
Have you ever considered what it would be like to really not be able to die? Yeah, things would be great on earth, but what happens when the sun goes Supernova? Now you're floating in space, in negative hundreds of degrees temperatures. You might float out there for millennia. What happens if you get sucked into a star's gravity? You would be at the surface of a star, burning in temperatures you couldn't imagine, until the star went Supernova. Then you get thrown back out into freezing space at light speed. Your only hope would be to get picked up by an alien species, and if you did get picked up by an alien species, what are they going to do with you? No thanks, not for me.
(Doing Therapy)
Huh, it seems I've been confusing telomeres and centrioles in my mind for a while.
I'm also pretty surprised to learn that humans have a distinctive mechanism for aging. How does it work for monkeys, then? I'd presume less well, since humans have much longer lifespans than most animals have in captivity.
If wikipedia is correct on telomere shortening, this'd extend lifespan by 20-40%, discounting other factors and assuming it works perfectly. Apparently, 60-80% of shortening is caused by oxygen. I've previously read similar.