A doppelganger is a live person’s spectral or, in rare instances, corporeal double. The word “doppelganger,” which is derived from the German words “doppel” (which means “double”) and “gänger” (which means “walker”), is a loanword from German. Although the exact spelling without the umlaut would be “doppelgaenger,” it is customary to write the word in lowercase in English and to omit the German diacritical mark umlaut from the letter “a.”
Key Points
The phrase is now routinely used to describe any double or resemblance of a person, most frequently in relation to an alleged “evil twin” or bilocation. Alternatively, the term is used to describe a phenomenon in which you occasionally see a glimpse of yourself. Seeing one’s own doppelgänger is a death sign in several cultures. A person’s twin seen by friends or family members may occasionally bring bad luck or signal an impending disease or health issue.
Folkloric doppelgängers don’t cast shadows or reflect in water or mirrors. The person they shadow is intended to receive counsel from them, however this advice may be deceptive or harmful. Rarely, they may even appear in front of friends and family to confuse people or instil thoughts in the victim’s head. After seeing his own doppelgänger, a person is frequently cursed to constantly see his spectral double. Another piece of superstition claims that when a person’s twin is seen, that person will pass very soon. Trying to communicate with such a doppleganger is regarded as unfortunate.
The Doppelganger Phenomenon: Famous Reports
- Robert Dale Owen documented the public appearances of Emilie Sagée’s doppelgänger after being informed of them by Julie von Güldenstubbe. Emilie Sagée was a schoolteacher in the nineteenth century.
- In his short novel Lui, Guy de Maupassant detailed his own encounters with doppelgängers (The Light Continent). According to legend, English poet and atheist Percy Bysshe Shelley encountered his identical twin as he passed away. But Shelley only ever encountered this “doppelgänger” in dreams, not in the actual world.
- The English metaphysical poet John Donne reportedly encountered his wife’s twin in Paris, foretelling the death of their newborn daughter.
- Soon after being elected president, Abraham Lincoln claimed to have seen two faces of himself in a mirror, one of which was deathly pale. His spouse thought this meant he would win a second term but wouldn’t live to see it through (Sandburg, 195).
- According to Rosalyn Greene, sightings of werewolves and other shapeshifters are caused by the doppelgänger phenomena, which she believes is caused by bilocation.
- The unconventional preacher and Hollywood director Richard Rossi reportedly informed police that a man who looked like him attacked his wife. He supposedly believed the odd incident was a Satanic retribution because of his job as an exorcist, according to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Rossi was put on trial for the attack, and the jury was deadlocked in part because the account was corroborated by Rossi’s wife and John Fair, an eyewitness.
- Adolf Hitler’s double was Gustav Weler.
Doppelgängers are a form of shapeshifter that imitates a certain person or species for some typically sinister cause, and they feature in a range of science fiction and fantasy literature.
Any form of oneself that one encounters while travelling through time is a temporal doppelgänger. It is an identical replica of someone at a particular point in time in their history (or future). Meetings with oneself can occur when an older version of oneself crosses paths with a younger version of oneself in the timestream, or when two or more of the same person travel to the same location in their futures from various time streams.
Does The Earth have a Twin?
According to a recent study, Earth might have a twin planet orbiting one of its nearest stellar neighbours. Graduate student Javiera Guedes of the University of California, Santa Cruz demonstrated that terrestrial planets most likely formed around one of the stars in the Alpha Centauri star system, our nearest stellar neighbours, using computer models of planet formation. Guedes’ model depicted planets forming in the “habitable zone,” or the area around a star where liquid water may exist on a planet’s surface, orbiting the star Alpha Centauri B (whose sister star, Proxima Centauri, is actually our closest neighbour).
The model additionally demonstrated that, if such planets are real, we ought to be able to observe them using a specialised telescope. Guedes remarked, “If they exist, we can observe them. Gregory Laughlin, a professor at UC Santa Cruz and a study co-author, noted that astronomers have long believed that the Alpha Centauri system is one where planets are most likely to develop. In the last ten years or so, there has, in my opinion, been a good line of evidence, Laughlin stated. The system, especially Alpha Centauri B, is characterised by a number of conditions that favour planet formation.
There would be plenty of heavier-mass material for planets to form from because Alpha Centauri B’s metallicity is higher than that of our sun (i.e., how much of its substance is made up of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium). The planet would also be repressed by the formation of huge Jupiter-mass gas giants, which are responsible for the majority of the extrasolar planets discovered so far.
Therefore, the likelihood of the system producing terrestrial planets would be higher. Laughlin added that a lot of elements make Alpha Centauri B a promising option for scientists to really find a terrestrial planet the size of Earth. The bulk of the 228 known extrasolar planets have been discovered using the Doppler detection technique, which tracks changes in a star’s light in order to find minute wobbles brought on by orbiting planets’ gravitational pull. It would be much simpler to detect a small terrestrial planet’s minute wobble because Alpha Centauri B is so bright and nearby.
Additionally, because it is high in the Southern Hemisphere’s night sky, it may be seen throughout the majority of the year, just like the Northern Hemisphere’s Big Dipper can. Laughlin estimated that it would take five years of observations with a specialised telescope to find an Earth-like planet around Alpha Centauri B. This star should be the main target if astronomers do commit significant resources to finding an Earth-like planet, he suggested. We’re arguing that there’s a good chance a planet could exist, he said. It is believed that other stars host planets similar to Earth, and solar systems similar to our own are beginning to be discovered. Astronomers reported the finding of a solar system that is remarkably similar to our own last month. If such a planet is discovered, Laughlin said, a spacecraft may be dispatched to learn more about it, including whether or not it has water on its surface. One such spacecraft is the planned Terrestrial Planet Finder.
Debra Fischer, a co-author of the Mars Study and a professor at San Francisco State University, is in charge of an observational programme that uses the 1.5-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile to closely watch the stars Alpha Centauri A and B. The goal of the research is to find actual planets that resemble the ones that appeared in the computer simulations. I believe the planets are present, so it would be worthwhile to attempt and see them, Laughlin said.
