SCIENCE
“Doppelgängers are real” - Science
You need to know how many of “you” are there.
Did it ever happen to you that you mistook some random person across the street as someone you know and started to conversate with them? His physique had the same silhouette and his face was indubitably identical. But when the individual denies being familiar with you, you just fell completely baffled. Yeah, it happens to the best of us.
What is Doppelgänger?
It is a german word which literally means “double goer”. They are or your body doubles or lookalikes and are not genetically correlated to you nor are they associated with your family tree. In German folklore, the meaning is — a specter or wraith of an alive person. The notion of the beingness of a spirit double, an rigorous but generally invisible simulation of every residing creature is an ancient and widespread tenet. To meet one’s double is an omen that one’s death is impending. “Doppelgänger”, hereby became a prominent symbol of the horror genre.
The Stats
By doppelgänger, I do not mean like an exact copy of yourself, he/she will look like your twin though. Researchers say that finding an exact copy of yourself is one in a trillion. But, wait for it :
You have a one in 135 chance that a single pair of completely identical doppelgänger of yours exists anywhere in the world.
The stats are just mind-boggling. I am currently majoring in science and the total number of students at my University is around 3000. So, chances of me coming across my doppelganger are 0.22%. And there are 7.59 billion people in the world (as of June 2020). I did the math, and the result says that there are a total of 50k individuals present in the world which are physically identical to you.
The Math
Have you ever heard about The Infinite Monkey Theorem? It posits that an imaginary monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, such as the complete work of William Shakespeare. How crazy is that to listen to. But, if you cogitate, you can explain The doppelganger dogma. Watch me do it:
What are the chances of the monkey hitting the first word right?
Well, there are 26 letters in the alphabets, so if you are going to ignore the grammar part, the monkey has one in twenty-six chance of correctly typing the first letter right. Then there comes the second letter. The chances of the monkey hitting the second character right are one in 26×26=676. Let’s say that the first word consists of 5 letters, then the chances of hitting the first-word wright will be one in 26×26×26×26×26=11,881,376.
Look at that, the probability is just getting diminished after every letter. If we continue to calculate in this manner, the probability of “the monkey” typing the whole work of William Shakesphere will be negligible. Look, what I am trying to explicate is that, — even if there exists a probability of you stumbling upon your exact look-alike, the odds are very minimal.
People & their Perception of Faces
Let me just start this segment with the cheesiest and banal pickup line ever:
Hey, you look like someone I know.
Yeah! it doesn't have any substantial link with this article. However, there is some science associated with that line. So why do you think people keep telling you they have seen someone like you?
People discern facial lineament distinctly. They perceive them as a whole, whereas one should discern them by accounting every single part of the face like ear, nose, and eyes.
Here is a photograph of two “visually identical” individuals. If you look at their faces side by side, they will look like twin siblings. However, look at their noses and eyes separately, they are looking quite distinct, aren't they? A whole face might look familiar and similar to another one, but they are not similar biologically. This is what exactly what happens when we come across twins, the look indubitably identical, but they are physically distinct in several ways. It’s quite likely to have a doppelgänger out there that your friends/colleagues think looks exactly like you, but if you were to scrutinize their features methodologically using science, it’s farfetched that they would be a legit match.
The Encounter
Let's say, after ignoring every odds aside, there exists a doppelgänger of you and he resides your own city. What will be your reaction when you will encounter them in person. Interesting question, right! In an article written by Anil Ananthaswamy for BBC future, he indited a report of a man who encountered his doppelgänger :
More than two decades ago, Peter Brugger, as a Ph.D. student in neuropsychology at the University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland, was developing a reputation as someone interested in scientific explanations of the so-called paranormal experiences. A fellow neurologist, who had been treating a 21-year-old man for seizures, sent him to Brugger. The young man, who worked as a waiter and lived in the canton of Zurich, had very nearly killed himself one day when he found himself face-to-face with his doppelganger.
The incident seemed to have been started when the young man had stopped taking some of his anticonvulsant medication. One morning, instead of going to work, he drank copious amounts of beer and stayed in bed. But it turned out to be a harrowing lie-in.
Well, this is one way of reacting at your double. Trust me there are people who have reacted better than this to their encounter. Here is a YouTube video displaying two doubles meeting in an amicable manner.
The Researchers
Photographer Francóis Brunelle has spent almost 13 years researching on doppelgängers. His project is titled “I’m Not a Look-Alike”. In his website, he describes this project as:
I'm not a look-alike! is a project dedicated to photograph look-alikes around the world, organize an international exhibition with them and publish a book.He has captured 106 couples already and his goal is to reach the 200 mark. He is Canadian and has traveled throughout America to do so.
There is one more website that goes by TwinStrangers who helps people find their doppelgängers. All you have to do is post your photo and wait for them to manhunt your double under their radar.
The Cloture
“The human face is extraordinarily unique. I mean think about it. The chance has to be quite low otherwise you would be bumping into people who looked like you all the time, and you don’t,” — Sir Walter Bodmer, Univ. of Oxford
The doppelgänger dogma tie in back to our deep evolutionary past when facial commonality was a nifty indicant of consanguinity. The probability of finding “one of your own” is very minimal. And before you go fantasizing about doing an evanescent life-swap with your ‘twin’, there’s no guarantee you’ll have anything in common physically either.
Keep one thing in mind that I never said ‘the finding’ is “impossible”.With seven and a half billion people in the world, it’s fun — if not a bit strange — to think that someone out there looks identical to us that even we have to do a double-take. Those who want to solicit their body-doubles can start with the Internet. Things you can do:
- Do a reverse Google image search and look through the “visually similar images
- Look up and appeal for “your kind” on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,…..
- Pay $3.95 per month on Twin Strangers
