The huge diamond mine is deep, sucking everything that flies past it including helicopters, small planes

03/24/2022 06:30 GMT+7

Mirny is about 450 km from the cold Arctic Circle, home to about 40,000 people. Alrosa is the world’s largest diamond mining company ‘based’ in Mirny. Most of the people in town work for this company.

The huge diamond mine is deep, sucking everything that flies past it including helicopters, small planes

There is a huge open pit diamond mine more than 525 meters deep with a diameter of 1.25 km.

Unlike anywhere else, the harsh geography makes people here often live in houses with pillars.

Winter is cold, ice covers everywhere and lasts at least 7 months. In the warmer months, the sun rises 20 hours a day in the summer. The ice melts, the house has pillars to help local people avoid flooding.

Scenes in the town of Mirny

In the 1950s, to meet the Soviet demand for diamonds after World War II, Stalin ordered the construction of the mine. The team of geologists scoured the country in hopes of finding diamonds, and they finally discovered signs of the precious metal in the Mirny area while sifting through sediment.

However, the rough terrain and cold weather made construction difficult.

During the winter, the temperature drops below minus 40 degrees Celsius, it is so cold that car tires burst, the oil freezes.

The workers were forced to use jet engines to melt the ice and use explosives to break the permafrost to build the mine. The mine was put into operation in 1960.

The giant hole has produced a lot of diamonds with a total value of at least 17 billion USD in half a century. One of the most famous diamonds here is the lime yellow which weighs 342.57 carats.

In 2004, the mine closed suddenly and the cause was given by a flood that made it impossible for the mine to produce any more. However, the world’s major diamond traders do not believe it. Since then, various rumors and conspiracy theories have emerged.

For many years, the great hole was abandoned, and the sky above was also restricted because of the terrifying depth of the mine.

The diamond mine is so large that it is capable of sucking up an entire helicopter or plane when passing by. This is because when the cold air from the surface meets the hot air from the mine, it creates a strong vortex that sucks everything down.

By 2009, the mine was operational again and is expected to continue operating for another 50 years. However, in 2017, the mine had a problem when it flooded at the right time with more than 100 workers still working inside. The incident resulted in the mine being closed again and scheduled to reopen in 2032.

To this day, the Mirny diamond mine remains a mysterious vortex, a seemingly bottomless pit that has produced more than half of the world’s diamonds.

Hoang Dung (synopsis)