fingerprints & snowflakes...

[missjef]

sorry if this comes across as being a stupid question but ive always wondered how anyone can say that every fingerprint and snowflake are all different without seeing each and every one?! because how do people know that there isnt someone else with their fingerprint? how do they know all snowflakes are different too, since millions upon millions of snowflakes fall, surely some must be the same?! i dont egt how people can make that statement without knowing for a fact they are all different. please explain!!

many thanks
em x

[fo3nix]

You could dig into a bit of nonlinear science, i.e. chaos theory, to learn more about it. Essentially, when the snowflakes grow, they do it in many random ways, and there are lots and lots of ways for the growth to occur due to their nonlinear behaviour.

So, there are more ways for the snowflake to grow than there are estimated snowlfakes on Earth, and hence the chance of finding two identical snowflakes is a very, very small probability. But the statement that many make that "no two snowflakes are alike," is incorrect really: it's just very unlikely for there to be two identical snowflakes.

[Grunty]

Police have been using fingerprint identification for 105 years and two weeks. It hasn't happened yet. The likelihood of two people having the same fingerprints has been calculated at 67 billion to one, ten times as many as the population of the world. No, I don't know how it was calculated - I can only read, not do sums.

[Toureman]

To make it even simpler, no two people on earth except for twins look the same.

[remesses]

not even twins have the same fingerprints even though they share the same dna.
there are to many random variables and improbable factors that arise when it comes to finger prints, people and spieces change over time and way to rapidly for there to be any repetition.
BUT i must agree with you on the snowflakes
if you consider how long snow flakes have been forming on earth over its history there is bound to have been a doppleganger somewhere :-)