Worms From Hell

Common Sense Commentary: Here is more curious, recently discovered,  scientific information which may throw a bit of light on a Scripture I have never quite understood. Or is it these verses which throw light on the article.  In Mark 9:42-48, Jesus was speaking of the horrors of hell and used this phrase three times ... "Where their worm dieth not." I have always thought these worms were magots and they may be but ... Well, read the article below from the scientific journal, NATURE. Here are worms from hell that feed upon bacteria.

NARURE             

International weekly journal of science

Nematoda from the terrestrial deep subsurface of South Africa

Since its discovery over two decades ago, the deep subsurface biosphere has been considered to be the realm of single-cell organisms, extending over three kilometres into the Earth’s crust and comprising a significant fraction of the global biosphere. The constraints of temperature, energy, dioxygen and space seemed to preclude the possibility of more-complex, multicellular organisms from surviving at these depths. Here we report species of the phylum Nematoda that have been detected in or recovered from 0.9–3.6-kilometre-deep fracture water in the deep mines of South Africa but have not been detected in the mining water. These subsurface nematodes, including a new species, Halicephalobus mephisto,and tolerate high temperature, reproduce asexually , preferentially feed upon subsurface bacteria. Carbon-14 data indicate that the fracture water in which the nematodes reside is 3,000–12,000-year-old palaeometeoric water. Our data suggest that nematodes should be found in other deep hypoxic settings where temperature permits, and that they may control the microbial population density by grazing on fracture surface biofilm patches. Our results expand the known metazoan biosphere and demonstrate that deep ecosystems are more complex than previously accepted. The discovery of multicellular life in the deep subsurface of the Earth also has important implications for the search for subsurface life on other planets in our Solar System.

Pass it on ??? RB