Predict someone's appearance?

[Sir Ask Alot]

Like what will they look like in the future? Like predict a boy that is, say, 11 years old, and predict what will he look like 5 more years and stuff.

 

Is there anyway?

[ecoli]

The police and government ages of computerized aging programs that are pretty accurate... they use them alot on those "milk carton" ads for kids who have been missing for years, they have to age them so people know who to look for. I'm not sure if these programs are avaible to the public though, or if they are, how expensive or accurate they are.

[insane_alien]

yes but it can be very very innaccurate since the aging process is different for everybody and it only applys general rules. there is a machine that does it in the glasgow science center.

[silkworm]

I was thinking about a similar thing a little over a year ago. We had this serial killer here that's been around for 30 years pop up out of nowhere after a 15 year silence so he could continue taunting the police. We had the guy's DNA (though I don't know how well perserved it was, cops here aren't very sharp) but we didn't know what he looked like. I was thinking that we could develope a program and plug in the DNA to grow the man virtually to simply have an idea of his overall appearance. There's actually a forensic scientist, I think in Florida, who uses a method he developed to predict the ethnicity of offenders based solely on DNA.

[susu]

yes but it can be very very innaccurate since the aging process is different for everybody and it only applys general rules. there is a machine that does it in the glasgow science center.

 

I agree. We all age differently. What applies to one person may not apply to another. However; its probably a useful aid in finding people missing for many years.