Worms Discovered in Two-Mile-Deep Gold Mine Are the Deepest-Dwelling Complex Life Forms
When We Find Life Elsewhere, This is What it Might Look Like The University Ghent, Belgium / Gaetan Borgonie If there is complex life on another planet like Mars, it may look less like the big-eyed bipeds of sci-fi lore and more like a tiny, 500-micrometer long nematoda worm. A Princeton University team has discovered a new species of worm, termed Halicephalobus mephisto (after Faust's demon Mephistopheles), at depths so deep that it was thought multicellular life couldn't survive there. H. mephisto was found thriving in three different gold mines in South Africa, where they've apparently been living in water and feeding off bacteria for thousands of years (carbon dating shows that they've been living at this depth for between 3000 and 12,000 years). Just how deep are they dwelling? H. mephisto was found as far down as 2.2 miles down, impressive considering that almost all multicellular life is found either...