Does Everyone Have a Look-Alike?

We've all done a double take when mistaking a random person on the street for someone we know or know of, like the celebrity look-alikes Will Ferrell and Chad Smith — the actor and the Red Hot Chili Peppers' drummer, respectively. But does everyone have a doppelganger? There's a fairly decent chance of it, actually, thanks to the limited number of genes that influence facial features.  "There is only so much genetic diversity to go around," said Michael Sheehan, an assistant professor of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell University, who routinely studies appearance variations and genetics in species such as paper wasps and house mice. "If you shuffle that deck of cards so many times, at some point, you get the same hand dealt to you twice." That said, that "deck of cards" is incredibly voluminous, Sheehan noted. Scientists currently have no idea how many genes play roles in establishing, for instance, the shape of human faces or the space between people's eyes. There's a "huge number of genes that contribute to things like facial structure and, of course, hair, eye and skin color, which are all highly variable," said Dr. Arthur Beaudet, a professor of molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.


http://www.livescience.com/52103-does-everyone-have-a-look-alike.html

It's true, I look like George Clooney!

When I was in my early 20s, a girlfriend insisted that this guy at a sandwich shop was my doppelganger, though I didn't really see it. She said he looked like me if I was always on the verge of tears