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How low can worms go ? harmonize to a new study , at least 0.8 miles ( 1.3 klick ) below the Earth ’s open .
That ’s the depth at which scientist discovered a new specie of worm , dubbedHalicephalobus mephistoin honor of Faust ’s demon Mephistopheles . The worm , reported this hebdomad in the journal Nature , is thedeepest living multicellular organismever found .
The nematodeH. mephistolives nearly a mile (1.3 km) underground in rock fractures near South African goldmines.
" We tried to get the championship of the newspaper publisher to be ' Worms from Hell , ' " said study author Tullis Onstott of Princeton University . " But Nature did n’t go for that . "
The Moby Dick worm
Onstott and his workfellow have been searching for subsurface life for 15 class , rivet on the radical - rich mines of South Africa , which penetrate more than 1.8 miles ( 3 kilometer ) into the Earth . They and other teams of scientist have found that life has very deep rootage , with single - celled organisms found miles underground . Some of these organisms are quite uttermost : One 2008 study found life thrivinga mile under the seafloor , surviving in temperatures between 140 and 212 degrees Fahrenheit ( 60 and 110 degrees Celsius ) . [ ReadExtremophiles : World ’s Weirdest Life ]
But find the multicellular , 0.02 - inch - retentive ( 0.5 millimeters)H. mephistois a dissimilar story . The worm , or nematode , live in fluid - filled rock fractures , where it pasture on bacteria , Onstott told LiveScience .
" It ’s kind of like get Moby Dick in Lake Ontario , " he say . " It ’s so volumetrically swelled . It ’s 10 billion multiplication the sizing of the bacteria upon which it feeds . "
To find the worm , Onstott and his team sampled water from mine boreholes as deep as 2.2 miles ( 3.6 km ) . They also taste soil around the mine boreholes and permeate about 40,000 gallons of surface water to insure that the nematodes were n’t come into the mine from above .
In the Beatrix gold mine , they determine their quarry : the midget , simple nematode , live and up to of nonsexual reproduction . The researchers were able to getH. mephistoto reproduce , and the specie is still " squirming around in the lab , " Onstott said . [ See a characterisation of the nematode worm ]
The researchers detect no grounds of the nematode in control surface water or soils , indicating that it is native to mystifying rock fractures . Chemical analysis revealed that the water in whichH. mephistolives date back at least 2,900 years , meaning it ’s been down there for a while , said Rick Colwell , a microbiologist who studies subsurface organisms at Oregon State University .
" They have been quite measured in measuring the surround that these organisms come from , " Colwell , who was not involved in the study , told LiveScience .
In lab experiments , the enquiry team found thatH. mephistoprefers to snack on the bacterium witness in deep rock fractures , turn up its wormy nose at aboveground snack counter options such asE. coli .
worm in space ?
The find could advance researchers to extend the search for life under our own foot , said Colwell , who along with others is work on a project call the Census of Deep Life , dedicated to cataloguing what lies beneath Earth ’s control surface .
" As we initiate this nosecount of inscrutable life , " Colwell said , " I can see expanding it in the instruction of some more complex life forms , like these nematodes . "
far from home , the find of very deep multicellular worms opens up possibilities in thesearch for extraterrestrial life sentence , said Michael Meyer , the lead scientist for Mars exploration atNASA , who was not involved in the study . researcher have assumed that anysubsurface lifeon a planet like Mars would be unicellular , Meyer told LiveScience .
" This kind of opens it up to , well , even multicellular biography could be potential , " Meyer said .
