According to a common opinion, the bizarre game of nature led to the fact that at least six (in a number of sources-seven) people, like two drops of water similar to us, go somewhere around the planet. We checked how correct this statement is.

You can read about this entertaining theory on resources such as Adme, "Komsomolskaya Pravda", Woman Journal, "Political expert", Rambler, "Myrtesen", "Soviet sport", and many others. Moreover, in a number of sources (for example, "Channel One", "Fourth power", "Arguments of the week") a reference to the scientific environment is made (“scientists count”, etc.). To confirm the theory in practice, several years ago was Created project Twin Strangers, with the help of which, by uploading your own photo, you can try to find your twins around the world.

In 2015, the Judicial Anthropologist Tagan Lucas from universities in the New South Wales and Flinders (Australia) published in "International Journal of Forensic Medicine" The results of their research are almost 4,000 people from the publicly accessible database of the US anthropometric research (Ansur), dedicated to the American military. Her main goal was to calculate the probability of detaining an innocent person from a photograph of a criminal.

As a basic metric, Lucas took eight parameters of the face and eight parameters of the rest of the body. Among the first were, for example, the length of the ears or the distance between the centers of the pupils of the eyes. The results turned out to be disappointing for fans of theory - according to the study, even despite the fact that 7.4 billion people live on the planet, the chance of at least one pair of doubles in the world in eight facial parameters is only 1 to 135. If we take into account the rest of the body, then this chance falls on a lot of orders - physical complexion turned out to be even more unique factor.

However, many of us periodically read news About the accidental doubles. How do they correlate with the results of the study of Australian scientists? The fact is that in this work very strict principles were used: if one person had 58 mm height, and the other had 59 mm, then this was interpreted as a mismatch. With visual perception, our brain does not fix such subtleties, so that people may seem to us people with quite different facial features. In addition, there is another factor.

“Many of those who seem to us doubles are people whom we do not know very well,” - Explains doctor Michael Shihan, neurobiologist from Cornell University (USA). “You have much more chances to see the double of your acquaintance than your mother. You know your mother very well. If someone looks like you, you can appreciate it, ”he adds, noting that our eyes will notice the differences with loved ones much earlier.

In addition, according to the doctor, one cannot but take into account the age factor - in three years he himself was like two drops of water like his brother, and now the difference is obvious.

Another study, held in 2019 by scientists of the University of California, proved the fact that people already guessed, but did not have a strict justification: representatives of someone else's race more often seem to double than their representatives.

Thus, it all comes down to the question of who can be considered a double. “We can talk about both visual resemblance and similarity from the point of view of the computer recognition program of images,” - He thinks David Oldus, Statistics Specialist from the University of California in Berkeley (USA). To find out a person (even seriously changed appearance after the last meeting), the brain ENCESS The so -called spindle -shaped gyrus for the information of all features of the face together. It is believed that such a comparison works is much more effective than comparing by certain features. However, the significance of some thinner details is also reduced. Most people are concentrated on surface characteristics, such as hair length, hairstyle, eyebrows. At the same time, according to research, people look first in the eyes, then at the mouth and nose. In addition, it should be noted that obviously there are people with the most common facial features and the owners of extremely rare types. In people from these two categories, the number of doubles will differ radically.

Where did the theory of six doubles come from? There is a version that this is nothing more than beautiful legend - Allegedly, seven twins are born at the same time in different parts of the Earth. And although she appeared on the World Wide Network quite late (not earlier than the 2010s), an abundance Indian sources on that topic, Demons ethnic Indians for "grandfather's stories", as well as Direct mention The legends of this region - all this can say that the legend takes its roots in Hindu mythology. Nevertheless, there are no scientific confirmation of the theory of six doubles, as well as a strict definition of the concept of “double”.