You and everyone you know are going to die, and that day might be sooner than you think. For years, it seems, our culture has pushed the idea that with the right combination of medicine, surgery, and better public health in general, we might be able to live for hundreds of years. In Star Trek, for example, Kirk lived to be 138. In Asimov’s Robot series, people could often live beyond 300 years old. But science, it seems, has found a problem with our lofty dreams of exceptionally long life.