Down there, an unprotected person wouldn't just drown. Remember, the deeper you dive into the ocean, the greater the pressure. No one in their right mind would dive into the Mariana Trench unprepared and unprotected. So yeah, no superpowers for you, only death. 10,000 millisieverts can wreck your intestines and end you in a week, and 20,000 could kill you in mere hours. A dose of 4,000 millisieverts can kill you in two months. Meanwhile, 1,000 millisieverts can cause hemorrhaging and diarrhea (via Reuters) while increasing your cancer risk. 500 millisieverts can make you nauseated, and 700 millisieverts can cause hair loss within half a month. The CDC's Radiation Thermometer provides some perspective: A chest X-ray emits about 0.1 millisievert (or 1/10,000th of a sievert), while a flight from New York to Los Angeles emits roughly a third of that. We measure radiation exposure in sieverts. The type and degree of suffering you'll endure depends on how you got blasted - whether internally or externally - and how much radiation you got blasted with, among other factors (via the EPA). As Popular Science explains, this can seriously damage your DNA, rendering your cells incapable of replicating and triggering their deterioration. This article is an extract from ‘Longevity: Why We are Living Longer than Ever and the Discoveries that May Allow Us to Live to 1000’ by Dr David Goldhill, which is available from Amazon in paperback (£10) and Kindle (£4.Ionizing radiation is powerful enough to charge your atoms by removing their electrons (via the WHO). Perhaps she will be around for the third? I celebrated the coming of the second millennia. What will her world look like, and that of her grandchildren? Maybe she will be the first person to live to be 1,000. I stand as the link between my grandfather and my granddaughter. ![]() But that is without accounting for medical progress. My grandchild can reasonably expect to live well into the 22nd century. The world my granddaughter was born into would be unrecognisable to the horse-drawn, steam-powered world of my grandfather’s birth. ![]() By the time of my granddaughter’s birth in 2016 the number of people on our planet had swollen to 7.4 billion. I came along in 1952 by which time it had grown to 2.6 billion. When he was born in 1894 the population of the world was about 1.6 billion. I was 26 when my grandfather died aged 84. In the future gene manipulation may directly introduce alterations in DNA to cure ageing and prolong life. ![]() We already know that small genetic changes can profoundly affect longevity. This creates novel changes impossible in nature. This was one of the most important discoveries that mankind has ever made. In 2003, after 13 years of work and at a cost of $2.7bn (£1.9bn), the more than 3 billion base pairs of the human genome were described for the first time. The molecular structure of DNA was only identified in 1953. This genetic material contains all the information needed to build and maintain an individual. With a few exceptions, each and every one of the 30 trillion cells that are your body contains a full set of DNA. ![]() They are being investigated to replace or renew damaged tissue in brain and spinal cord, in the heart, to replace teeth, restore vision and transplant new pancreatic cells to produce insulin. These cells could be used to replace those lost or damaged and be used to build new organs without the risk of rejection. We now know that these specialised cells can be rejuvenated back into pluripotent stem cells with the potential to turn into almost any other cell. During development the embryonic cell differentiates and turns into the specialised cell that is its destiny. These cells contain all the genetic information to become any other type of cell. Stem cells may provide the answer to regeneration. If humans are to live longer than anyone has before then medical science will have to up its game. We can’t rely on this to extend life as there is little evolutionary pressure once we have had children and passed on our genes. Natural selection is the key mechanism in evolution. I can’t tell you how to live for hundreds of years, but at the moment nobody can. A healthy, non-smoking lifestyle involving exercise, good nutrition and rewarding social interactions will maximise the chances of achieving your potential lifespan. The oldest reliably documented person was a French woman called Jeanne Calment who died in 1997 at the age of 122. Worldwide there are thought to be about 400 people older than 110 years, and more than 90 per cent of them are women. For example, Michelangelo died in 1564 three weeks before his 89th birthday. Living to 70 or 80 years of age was not unusual in historical times. Psalm 90:10 in the Bible concedes a natural life span of three score years and 10, or fourscore for the fortunate.
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