Passenger seated on plane next to stranger who looks exactly like him

Have you ever wanted a twin? This man met the next best thing, when he sat next to a stranger who looked exactly like him on a flight.

The ginger-bearded man met his match met his match, and was delighted to meet someone who looked exactly like him.

They took a grinning selfie together on the flight, which was posted on social media by the friend of our hero's wife.

She tweeted: "Guy on right is the husband of my friend. Guy on left is a STRANGER he met on a flight last night!"

She later added: "I can't stop looking at it. They are the same man."

Lee's followers saw the resemblance too, and replied with Parent Trap gifs and other jokes.

They even found another man who resembles the two on the plane.

Scientists have conceded that doppelgangers are statistically possible.

However, because humans are actually not great at facial recognition, and we are clouded by bias - if someone says to you 'these two people look exactly the same', then you will try to find ways in which they do - we might think people who just look similar are exact copies of each other.

Daniele Podini from a forensic scientist and expert in facial recognition at George Washington University in Washington D.C told  Science Line that based on the number of humans, and the fact that our genes combine randomly, it is likely that a few of us look similar. He points out that even so, there is a bias in claiming that someone looks exactly like someone else, because our perception is “filtered by our own experiences.”

When we see a face, every aspect of that person's face becomes part of a code.

You might read someone’s face in the order: eyes, mouth, nose. The size and placement of her eyes dictate the way you see the rest of her face.

Another person might interpret these features in the order: nose, mouth, eyes. The brain gets the same signals, but the scrambled order places emphasis on the nose instead and adjusts the perception of the rest of the face. In this way, we all see each other differently, making the credibility of doppelgangers a bit suspect.

However, it is undeniable that these men look very similar indeed - and it is a funny coincidence that they just happened to sit next to each other on a plane.