Humans are unlikely to live longer than 125 years and even advances in medical sciences will not break through the barrier, a study has concluded. Since the 19th century, average life expectancy has risen almost continuously, with a baby born today expected to live until 81, compared to just 50 years in 1900.Improvement in longevity led many scientists, such as Harvard's Professor David Sinclair, to speculate that there is no upper limit on how long humans can live for.But a new study published in the journal Nature suggests that the upward trajectory does have a ceiling, and we have already hit it.Scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York believe that human life expectancy probably peaked in 1997 with the death of the world's oldest woman Jeanne Calment, aged 122.In the last two decades, the age at which the oldest people die has largely plateaued at around 110, and, despite astonishing scientific advance, nobody has beaten Calment's record. The oldest person alive today is Emma Morano, 116, an Italian, although an Indonesian man claims to be 145.The researchers believe that imperfections in the copying of genes will always mean there is a finite limit to human life. The claim that 125 years is the limit of human life span and the chance of a supercentenarian passing that is just one in 10000."Demographers as well as biologists have contended there is no reason to think that the ongoing increase in maximum life span will end soon," said senior author Dr Jan Vijg, professor of genetics at Albert Einstein. "But our data strongly suggest that it has already been attained in the 1990s."Further progress against diseases may continue, boosting average life expectancy, but not maximum life span."Perhaps resources now being spent to increase life span should, instead, go to lengthening health span."Dr Vijg and colleagues analysed information from the Human Mortality Database, which compiles mortality and population data from more than 40 countries.The team then looked at data from Britain, the US, France and Japan from the International Database on Longevity, and focused on those who lived to 110 or older. Age at death for these supercentenarians increased rapidly between the 1970s and early 1990s but reached a plateau around 1995 at 110. ..