What are the chances of meeting your doppelganger? Folk signs: what does meeting a double mean and is it possible to avoid the consequences? What to do if you see a double.
In fantastic works, the technique of “time bending” is sometimes used: it stops flowing as usual, or a person “falls out” into the past or future. Can this happen in reality?
It turns out that there are a lot of similar examples in the history of anomalous phenomena! Researchers believe this is due to unknown physical effects. So, in July 1990, the famous paranormal researcher I. Mirzalis (Igor Vinokurov) investigated the case of a poltergeist. When, during the conversation, one of the people who became victims of this phenomenon left the table, the researcher, looking at his wristwatch, automatically noted the time in his notebook: “20.10.”
About a quarter of an hour later, the person who had left returned, and Igor Vladimirovich, looking at the dial again, put down the time: “20.10.” He noticed the discrepancy much later, studying his notes... He checked his watch - it was running fine. This means that the phenomenon was observed only in the house where the poltergeist occurred! In the spring of the same year, Muscovite D. Davydov experienced a strange adventure. He was going to meet his friend who lived one bus stop away from him.
We agreed that Davydov would come to the entrance of a friend’s house. When he hung up the phone, it was exactly two o'clock in the afternoon. He decided to immediately leave the house to get some fresh air. And suddenly he saw that his friend was coming towards him! There was no way this could have happened, since at most a few minutes had passed since the conversation. Then Davydov was blinded by a flash of some light, and when the ability to perceive his surroundings returned to him, he discovered that there was no friend nearby.
In bewilderment, Davydov reached the stop, boarded the bus and drove to a friend’s house. He opened the apartment door and was terribly surprised: “Well, you’re just like a jet plane!” I just called and I’m already here! How did you do it?” Davydov looked at his watch - it showed 14.00! His friend's watch showed the same thing. But from the moment they called, at least forty minutes must have passed until they met in the apartment!
The phenomenon of the appearance of doubles may also be associated with falling into such a “time loop”. It must be said that people have long treated the appearance of ghostly doubles - dopplegangers - with superstitious fear. It was believed that this was not good, but most likely - a serious illness or death... So, I.V. saw their doubles shortly before his death. Goethe, Russian empresses Catherine I and Anna Ioannovna...
Before the death of Empresses Elizaveta Petrovna and Catherine the Great, their phantoms were also observed in the Winter Palace... And in October 1923, a double of Lenin was seen in the Kremlin, who at that time was lying seriously ill in Gorki... However, the appearance of doubles of famous researchers of anomalous phenomena Anatoly Martynov and already the mentioned Igor Mirzalis (Vinokurov) did not lead to any tragic consequences. Although in these cases the doubles appeared not to himself, but to other people.
Here's another such episode. In 1975, two students of the University of Perm, Alexander and Igor, agreed late one evening to get together and drink three bottles of cheap wine, which was their custom then... Approaching the house where Igor rented a room on the first floor, the friends saw in the window light. Only Igor had the key, and he remembered very well that in the morning when he left the house, the lights were turned off...
Looking out the window, the guys were taken aback: sitting in the room at the table... were themselves! The doubles had glasses of wine in their hands. Looking out the window, they both laughed and, raising their glasses in greeting, drank... The young people rushed away from the house. They walked the streets for a long time and discussed the sight they had seen. In the end, they came to the conclusion that they were visited by a mass hallucination...
Returning to Igor’s house, they discovered that the light in the window was no longer on. The room was locked, and there were no traces of the “feast” in it. Having placed bottles and glasses on the table, the friends poured wine, drank and again started talking about their mysterious adventure. “Or maybe these doubles of ours are now clinging to the windowsill and looking at us?” - Igor joked. Looking towards the window, they laughed and raised their glasses, as if in greeting... And only after that they realized that they had exactly repeated the gestures of the “clones” they had seen earlier...
They just saw their own future in some unimaginable way! According to scientists, theoretically, the effect of “distorted time” can arise as a result of a powerful gravitational, electromagnetic or nuclear impulse caused by an artificial or natural cause. A living being or object subjected to such an effect breaks down into molecules, which then reconnect with each other. Sometimes we may not even notice a short-term “absence”... But sometimes, as a result of such processes, “miracles” occur, such as meeting our own double...
Folk signs have repeatedly proven their effectiveness. For example, meeting a double is considered one of the surest signs that foretell death or a series of troubles.
Is the sign as true as is popularly believed? In German, doubles are called doppelgangers. This could be a mystical entity or a random repetition of sets of genes. But in most cases, a doppelganger is the dark half of a person, a creature somewhat reminiscent of a werewolf. In a calm state, he is a shadow that, at his own request, is able to take on the appearance of a certain person.
Legends that come from Ancient Egypt tell about such creatures. Then they were called "ka". It was believed that the appearance of these silent shadows always predicted trouble. In the mythology of Bretonnia, the role of the doppelganger was played by the spirit Anku, who was encountered only by those people who were about to die.
How real doubles are can be understood by reading several cases confirmed by official protocols. At the beginning of this century, a tram driver hit his own double. He appeared in front of the vehicle completely unexpectedly. The police still cannot find out who the deceased was and why he was an exact copy of his unwitting killer. By the way, the man himself could not bear the realization of his own guilt and died a year after a heart attack.
Doubles do not necessarily appear using a physical shell. Often, they come in the form of spirits. Catherine the Great contemplated one of them before her death. Empress Anna Ioannovna lay dying when her double calmly walked around the palace chambers and did not hide from the amazed courtiers.
Who are they, doubles, figures who predict death and provoke it, or, on the contrary, trying to protect a person from harm by their appearance? For some reason, people's rumors made them absolute killers. However, there is a lot of evidence to the contrary. Thus, there is a known case when, after meeting with a double, a person was not only able to avoid mortal danger, but also became a successful banker.
The story of Emilia Sazhe is indicative, who in 1845 got a job as a teacher in a boarding house located near Riga. The women would be happy with their work, if not for one oddity. She was often met at the same time in completely different masses. One day, in front of her students, she split in two at the blackboard. One Emilia remained to write with chalk, the second walked over and sat down at the teacher’s table. After this, the woman was fired. In her own words, she lost her 19th job. At the beginning of the 20th century, the illusionist Roger Louis became famous for his ability to split. They tried to expose him several times, but not a single attempt was successful. Rogers himself simply dreamed of finally being left alone.
It is impossible to say how true the sign is. A double is not necessarily a harbinger of death. However, when you meet him, it is better to take care of your own health and exercise some caution.
Incredible facts
Have you ever noticed someone in a crowd who looked a lot like you?
Many of us have so-called doubles in the person of spouses and family members. However, scientists have calculated that the likelihood of finding your real double is very low.
Teghan Lucas, a PhD student at the University of Adelaide's School of Medicine, conducted the study using a database of facial and body measurements of more than 4,000 people, combined with mathematical calculations.
She found that the probability of finding two faces with the same parameters in the general population is less than 1 in a trillion.
Although this suggests that the chances of finding your doppelgänger are slim to none, some people have done the impossible.
Stories of doppelgängers (photos)
A man met his doppelganger on a plane
The bearded man met his doppelganger when he accidentally sat in his seat. Neil Douglas was surprised to find his almost identical twin, Robert Stirling, on a flight from London to Galway. Instead of asking him to move, the 32-year-old photographer took a selfie and shared the photo on social media.
The stranger turned out to be incredibly similar: the same thick red beard and mustache, smile and hairstyle. Both men, who were wearing black shirts, later learned that they had checked into the same Irish hotel and decided to celebrate their acquaintance with a beer at a nearby bar.
Doubles of people
The girl who met her doppelganger in college in Germany
Irish student Ciara Murphy moved to Bremen, Germany to study, but the last thing she expected was to meet her doppelganger there. The girl began to suspect something was wrong when they started asking her if she and her sister had arrived.
The same question was asked to the unsuspecting Cordelia Roberts from the UK, who also moved to Germany to study. Eventually, the girls ran into each other and realized that others had mistaken them for twins. Ciara and Cordelia are now friends and are still called "the twins" in college.
How to find a double from a photo
The woman who decided to find a double via the Internet
Irish presenter Niamh Geaney, 26, launched a 28-day challenge called Gemini Strangers to find the person who is most like her. Neve was amazed to find a woman exactly like her living just an hour's drive away.
Neve found Karen Branigan in April 2015 when her social media campaign gained traction. The couple met and took photos.
Moreover, after some time, she found another girl from Italy via the Internet, who was even more similar to her. Neve flew to Genoa, Italy to meet her doppelganger, blue-eyed brunette Louise.
The girl accidentally found her double through Instagram
Amanda Fisher and Meredith Pond are not twins, although the similarities between the two girls are striking.
Fisher's friend pointed her to a photo of another girl on Instagram who looked exactly like her. Amanda was unable to contact the girl, and published a photo of herself and the girl on Imgur, asking users to find the girl.
Many didn't believe the photos were of two different people until one person recognized the lookalike as 22-year-old Meredith Pond from Indiana, directing her to Amanda's Facebook page. After this, the girls got in touch and exchanged photos.
Search for doubles
Photographer has been photographing double strangers for 12 years
Canadian Francois Brunelle became so interested in the phenomenon of doppelgängers that for 12 years he searched for people with almost identical features.
He created the project “I’m Not a Look-Alike,” a photo exhibition of unrelated “twins” he met around the world.
Brunel himself has been compared to the famous comedian Rowan Atkinson, who played Mr. Bean.
Lookalikes site
Doppelgangers who met five minutes after registering on a doppelgangers website
These girls, with an age difference of 10 years, live thousands of kilometers from each other. Jennifer, 33, from Texas, and Ambra, 23, from North Carolina, met five minutes after they signed up for Twin Strangers, a website that helps people find their doppelganger from around the world.
What are the chances that one day you will find your exact copy? The editors of BBC Future asked this question and found out that meeting a “clone” is actually not that difficult. And all because there are too many people living on Earth.
We see faces everywhere: in passports, on “Police Wanted” stands, at alumni reunions and on the streets. They recognize you by your face, even if they haven’t seen you for years. The face is so closely tied to your identity that it has even been proposed as a universal identifier: you could walk into an office, buy a house and unlock a smartphone using your face. The underlying assumption behind this idea is that your face is unique. However, it is not.
“I was the last one to board the plane. Someone was sitting in my place. I asked the guy to move. He turned to me - and it turned out that he had my face,” says Neil Douglas, who met the doppelganger while flying to a wedding in Ireland. “The whole plane looked at us and started laughing. That’s when I took a selfie.”
The “irony of fate” did not end there: Douglas arrived at the hotel - and there he again met his double. Their paths crossed again at the bar. The next morning, Douglas was already a celebrity: a photo of his doubles became viral. In response, photos of people with exactly the same appearance poured in on Instagram.
Popular wisdom says that everyone has a double. Somewhere on the planet there lives an exact copy of you, with “mom’s” eyes, “daddy’s” nose and even a mole on the cheek. This idea has inspired artists and poets for centuries. The motif is found even in one of the oldest literary monuments, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Many historical figures have claimed to have seen their doubles: Queen Elizabeth saw her exact duplicate on her deathbed in 1603.
What is this belief based on? We share the planet with seven billion other people. Does this mean that someone else will definitely be born with your face? This is not a very serious question with serious background, and the answer is more complicated than it might seem.
Until recently, few people were involved in “clone science.” Last year, Tegan Lucas from the University of Adelaide in Australia decided to test how likely a person was to be convicted of a crime committed by a double. The researcher analyzed four thousand photographs and counted how many similar faces there were. The conclusion was favorable for criminologists: the probability of being someone’s copy according to eight indicators (distance between the eyes, length of the nose, and so on) is one in a billion. This means that for our planet the possibility of the existence of at least one pair of doubles is 1 in 135. Tegan summarizes:
“In the past, you could ask in court: “What if this is just a person who looks like a criminal?” Now we can say that this is extremely unlikely.”
The results can be explained in terms of the famous infinite monkey theorem. Put a monkey at a typewriter, give it enough time, and sooner or later it will spit out the collected works of William Shakespeare or Leo Tolstoy, just by randomly hitting the keys. True, to catch up with the classics, the primate will need an unimaginably long time. There is a one in 26 chance that the monkey will guess the first letter of Macbeth in the original. So far so good. But the probability of getting the second letter correct is only 1 in 676 (26 x 26). By the end of the fourth line (22 letters), the ratio becomes microscopic: 1 to 13 quintillion. As the number of combinations increases, their probability decreases at a dizzying rate.
There are two objections here. Firstly, the selection of only eight external features seems arbitrary. Secondly, the researcher relied on precise measurements: if your double’s ear length is 59 millimeters, and yours is 60, then the similarity will not be counted. (And in any case, similar ears are not the most obvious criterion for finding copies).
In general, a lot depends on what we call the word “double”. Berkeley statistician David Aldous says:
“It makes a big difference whether we mean similarity from a human’s perspective or from a facial recognition program’s perspective.”
Francois Brunel, who shot 200 pairs of “clones” for his project “I am not a double,” came to the same conclusion. If you look at the models individually, Brunel says, they appear to be exact copies of each other. But put them together and the differences can be easily found.
If you remove the requirement of an exact match in all features, then finding your double becomes much more realistic. However, now we need to take the next step: understand what happens in our minds when we recognize a familiar face.
In the late 90s, an optical illusion dedicated to Bill Clinton and Al Gore was circulating on the Internet. At first glance, the President and Vice President appear to be standing next to each other, but you soon notice that Gore's facial features have been replaced with Clinton's eyes, nose and mouth. At the same time, the vice president looks more or less recognizable.
This is an example of how faces are stored in the brain: they are more of a map than an image. When you run into people you know on the street, your brain instantly begins to recognize their features - hairline and skin tone. It's like how we recognize Italy by its shape. But what if our friend just got a new hairstyle? Or wears makeup?
To ensure reliable recognition in any context, the brain uses the so-called fusiform gyrus. It is she who connects all the features together. This holistic approach allows you to recognize friends faster than looking at traits individually. The brain concentrates on the big picture at the expense of small details.
“Most people focus on superficial features like hairline, hairstyle, eyebrows,” explains Nick Fjeller, a statistician at a research project on computer-assisted facial recognition.
Unique appearance is the main parameter thanks to which even people who have not seen each other for years can recognize each other in a crowd. It is individual facial features that help a modern person unlock his smartphone. A photograph of a face is a mandatory component of a passport, helping to identify a person.
We are accustomed to the fact that our appearance is unique. However, sometimes illusions about one’s own uniqueness are shattered by reality. And a glitch occurs in rational nature, as a result of which it periodically produces doubles. Who are the doubles? Is this a mistake of nature or is their occurrence due to a higher purpose?
The phenomenon of the existence of doubles
According to geneticists, the probability of the existence of two people surprisingly similar to each other is quite high. After all, all individuals living today are descended from a significantly smaller number of ancestors. This means that the set of genes inherited by descendants is quite limited.
Yes, their number, taking into account constant mutation and evolution, is enough to make people different from each other. But theoretically, there may not be enough of them to provide more than 7 billion people with a unique appearance. And excellent proof of this are cases of meeting doubles. A double is a person who is very similar or almost indistinguishable in appearance.
In addition, it is believed that the human genome is 99.9% identical. And only 0.1% is responsible for the individuality of each person. There are even fewer genes responsible specifically for appearance. Therefore, even with a seemingly huge number of DNA combination options, the chance of the formation of similar external data has a right to exist.
First of all, all people are representatives of the same species. We are connected by approximately similar body proportions, facial structure and our needs often coincide.
Moreover, from a mathematical point of view, all people are related to each other to some extent. Calculations helped to find out that after 8 generations each person can have about 250 relatives, and after 30 generations this number can exceed 1 million. Therefore, it is logical that there is a possibility of meeting some fifty-cousin who surprisingly has the same genetic set from his ancestors.
How high is the chance of meeting your double?
In fact, the chance of meeting a double person is extremely small. The diversity of races significantly reduces it, because it is impossible to imagine that a Chinese person will look like a Nigerian.
But the likelihood of meeting your double increases markedly among people belonging to common ethnic groups. In addition, similar features are more often found among mestizos, since the number of combinations combining the characteristic features of the two peoples is very limited.
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