A new biometric face scanner from the Japanese company Sagawa Advance has taken the technology to the next level, able to differentiate between identical twins with no problems at all. It does this by using an infrared scanner to analyze a whopping 40,000 data points on your face.

This is a good thing, because Sagawa Advance's scanner is used as access to high-security areas such as power plants and medical factories where they've got to make sure that it's really the plant supervisor entering and not his evil twin bent on the destruction of the human race. That's always the worst. [Digital World Tokyo]

11:20 AM on Fri May 9 2008
By Adam Frucci
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17 comments

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Darrone at 11:24 AM on 05/09/08
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Practical application: A 100% accurate "have i slept with her" meter for college students.
Gann at 11:26 AM on 05/09/08
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I've always wondered of things like mood affect the accuracy of these things. If your initial scan happened on a good day, would you have to be happy for it to recognize you? Does aging throw it off? What about acne?
OG512 at 11:28 AM on 05/09/08
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Tom Cruise can beat this hands down! Mission Impossible baby!

@Darrone:

sometimes you don't want to know if you slept with her.
**intoxicated demons**
Darrone at 11:29 AM on 05/09/08
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@OG512: I'm assuming it will be built with beer-goggling uggo protection.
Munch at 11:30 AM on 05/09/08
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Don't twins have different fingerprints and retinal patterns?
OG512 at 11:35 AM on 05/09/08
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@Darrone: so it'll be woth it to keep Sandra Hepburn out of your bed!
Blacksage at 11:37 AM on 05/09/08
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Damn! now my twin brother can't fill in for me at work while I'm at home drinking beer and making prank calls. How much would it cost to get a clone?
Curves at 11:51 AM on 05/09/08
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Here is a great testing environment. [www.twinsdays.org] Everywhere you look you see double. This is most confusing when you have had a couple of beers.
ANoel at 11:54 AM on 05/09/08
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@Munch:
Monozygotic (Identical) twins are more identical than clones.
I have been one all my life.
My brother and I even have identical voiceprints.
Once, we combed our hair the same way, wore the same T-shirts and carefully setup a 8" x 10" camera and took highest resoltion portraits of each other. We mounted the prints on gatorboard and cut them up into 1" cubes which we threw into a brown paper bag with a nice ribbon as a Mother's Day gift.
It took our Mom more than a week to get them all reassembled correctly!
The only way you could tell who's who was to take down our pants.
David is 4 minutes older than me but I'm 4" longer.
JBKing at 12:30 PM on 05/09/08
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@ANoel: TMI
Munch at 12:51 PM on 05/09/08
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@ANoel: That's pretty cool, but it would have been WAY cooler if you just became an identical twin a few days ago... Multicellular Mitosis, FTW!

Do you two have the same fingerprints, though?
ANoel at 12:59 PM on 05/09/08
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@Munch:
"Do you two have the same fingerprints, though?"

Sorry M8, I hear that's too "TMI".
bosskev at 01:01 PM on 05/09/08
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To the tech genii who came up with this, all I can say is "thank you" a hundred times over! NOW maybe I'll quite being mistaken for Brad Pitt. Such a nuisance.

* No, no, Angie. I was only kidding, I really am your Braddykins. Go back to sleep now. Kisses. *
cygnusx8 at 02:12 PM on 05/09/08
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Still can't tell you ass from your face.
Ethan Allison at 07:56 PM on 05/09/08
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Isn't it easier just to have a goatee detection machine?
jkr2 at 09:48 PM on 05/09/08
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i believe everything i read. btw, identical twins don't have identical fingerprints.
Dynastius at 03:51 AM on 05/10/08
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Being able to identify the differnces between identical twins is cool, but not that useful. First of all, identical twins aren't a very large part of the overall population. Secondly, it's pretty rare that you are trying to identify if a person is John or his twin Bill with a computer.

The much bigger problem that needs to be solved with these types of systems is to allow them to successfully identify that a person is the same person as one they already have a pic of. Different angles, lighting, haircuts, glasses, and age all make it very difficult for these type of systems to accurately identify that the person is the same person.