Is your exact double having a coffee right now someplace across the world? Experts say it’s possible.
If you were born with an identical twin, the chances that someone who looks exactly like you is walking this earth someplace as we speak, are extremely high. But if you weren’t? Is your look alike out there?
Many people believe one could be. To put the rumor to the test, a team from the University of Adelaide in Australia recently decided to conduct a study.
BBC.com, tells of how Teghan Lucas led a group of researchers as they used science and math to analyze the faces of almost 4,000 people.
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The researchers dove into a public collection of photographs of U.S military personnel and analyzed the faces of the people pictured. Since a doppelganger technically should look exactly like you, the team looked at mathematical aspects of the faces, like the distance between a person’s eyes and ears.
From these measurements, they then calculated the probability that two people’s faces would match each other, mathematically speaking.
What was found? Somewhat surprising results. Amazingly, there’s a one in a trillion chance that someone actually shares eight facial measurements with you, at this moment on the planet.
In essence, it’s not likely, but it is possible.
Imprecise Twins
There’s more though. It’s good to consider that the software programs used in the study relied on very precise measurements. So, if someone had measurements that were just 1 millimeter different from yours, this wouldn’t count.
The catch is though, that as humans, we often perceive two people to look very much alike, even when the distances on their faces are actually quite different.
Related: Your Face Reveals If You’re Rich or Poor: Study
So, taking this fact and other things into consideration, researchers have also found that you could truly have no less than 74,000 “potential doppelgangers”.
These are people who would be considered to look very much like you, but are not exact carbon copies. It’s kind of complicated, and you can get into the details, here.
The takeaway? Your perceived double could very well out there, right now. Hopefully they’re kind and doing nice things. And if someone says you look really familiar but you’ve definitely never met, now you know why.
