In Dante’s epic poem, The Inferno, there were nine circles with various horrible punishments. The final circle had sinners embedded in a frozen icy lake. Those who committed more severe sin were deeper within the ice. Judas Iscariot was in the deepest layer.
Can you link to the column? I tried to search for it, but I couldn’t find it.
Possibly this Staff Report?
If the temperature of Hell is proportional to the number of souls it consumes … then we can certainly say Hell is getting hotter … and over these past few centuries we’re looking at an exponential increase in temperature with all the heathens and what-nots croaking … I’d say anything frozen in Hell quickly thawed around the time television became widespread … the internet has set it to boiling … with such sin upon the land, a snowball has no chance … and I do mean a probability of zero …
I have heard that ‘outer darkness’ is cold, by comparison Hell is a vacation spot and a act of divine mercy. From revelations regarding Matt 8:12, 22:13, 25:30. Possible that Dante just lumped them all together as they are the negative sorts of afterlife stuff.
(for those who are interested, outer darkness has been revealed to be a universe that the victim is placed in with nothing in it - yes it is cold)
Revealed where? By whom?
Hell froze over in 1994 when the Eagles reunited.
1.) Revealed by who?
2.) “Hot” and “cold” are measures of the kinetic energy of matter. An empty universe would have no temperature.
Hey, literally went there and got the t-shirt!
Is it just me, or are the immortal hell worms more frightening than the eternal hell fire? ::shudder::
Don’t worry, they are being driven into extinction. (I don’t remember where I read it, but some speculate that the biblical worm that “dieth not” was the guinea worm. I’m guessing you wouldn’t be pro-wormist.)
There is the classic answer to the question “is hell exothermic or endothermic?”
In a similar vein, there is the classic physics proof that heaven is hotter than hell.
Probably revealed by the internet, the modern equivalent of the Pythian Oracle at Delphi (and just as untrustworthy.) 
A very belated correction necessary to this column: The reference to worms that will not die and fire that will not be quenched is in fact from the Old Testament, specifically, Isaiah 66:24.
But the passage is also present in the New Testament, Mark 9:44, Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. So the column is perfectly correct.
In Dante, Hell has different flavors for different sinners, but the very lowest part, where the traitors go (not just political traitors, but all kinds), is a frozen lake. It’s made of Satan’s tears (he’s in it up to his waist), and it’s kept cold by the wind of Satan’s wings as he continually beats them in a vain attempt to escape, not understanding that it’s his efforts to fly away that are imprisoning him. (Yes, I know the thermodynamics are wrong; the middle ages didn’t know diddly-squat about thermodynamics.) Most of the traitors are in the ice, but the worst of all, Cassius, Brutus, and Judas, are being used by Satan as everlasting Slim Jims.
It’s clear why Dante selected Judas as one of the three for Satan to munch on but I wondered about Brutus and Cassius, whether this reflected a particular veneration for Julius Caesar on Dante’s part or he was merely echoing something traditional.
After a little googling I found this page which, given its UT provenance, I assume is accurate.
I thought that interesting. I haven’t read Dante’s great work since I was in my youth, I must get back to it (and this time with a well-annotated edition.)
BTW there’s an absolutely marvelous depiction of this scene in the 1980s Thames TV and NHK Japan co-production of Una Stravaganza dei Medici. The singing is simply heavenly too.
The bit about the temperature of Heaven is flawed, since it neglects the effects of albedo. For any given light input, one can produce a suitably-comfortable temperature just by setting the albedo sufficiently high, and the albedo of Heaven is universally regarded as high.
aldiboronti:
I guess so. I imagine Mark must have himself been quoting Isaiah.