Deep in the Siberian region of eastern Russia is a mining town unlike any other.
Located roughly 280 miles from the Arctic Circle is the town of Mirny, which sits alongside an open-pit diamond mine that is more than 1,722 feet deep with a diameter of 3,900 feet.
It is one of the largest excavated holes in the world that churns out a mysterious amount of diamonds and has the possibility of sucking in anything that flies overhead.
Mirny is approximately 280 miles from the Arctic Circle and is the only sign of humanity for miles around.
It's known as a mono-city because the majority of the population works for the same company, Alrosa, it is the world's largest diamond mine by volume.
Adding to the location's eeriness, the town has been built on stilts due to the fact that the ground is covered in a thick layer of permafrost for at least seven months of the year.
When the warmer months hit the permafrost turns into slush and the stilts help to prevent flooding their homes.
The town can trace its beginnings back to 1955 when the Soviet Union was still rebuilding itself after World War II.
A team of geologists had been searching the country in hopes to find diamonds and eventually found signs of diamonds in the area while sifting through the sediment.
By 1957, Stalin had ordered the Mirny diamond mine to be built but the rough terrain and weather made things difficult.
During winter Mirny is 40 degrees below zero. It is so cold that car tires shatter and oil freezes.
They were forced to use jet engines to thaw the ground and dynamite to get through the permafrost so that the mine could be built.
This all proved to be worth it though as by 1960, the mine was up and running and providing a bounty of riches.
During the first decade of the mine operating it produced 10,000,000 carats of diamonds per year, 20% of which were gem quality.
An even greater find was when it produced a 342.57-carat fancy lemon yellow diamond, the largest that had ever been found in the country.
While the mine seemed to be successful, people started to grow suspicious of the number of diamonds it seemed to be churning out.
De Beers, the world’s top distributor of diamonds, wanted to investigate its production rates, as it seemed too good to be true.
They requested a tour of the mine but it took six years to be approved and when De Beers representatives arrived in Mirny, they dealt with pushback.
Once they were finally granted access to the mine, they were only given a 20-minute tour, nowhere near enough time to investigate their processes.
The mine continued to be a mystery to onlookers as it continued to churn out billions of dollars worth of mines with no one knowing how it achieved this.
In 2004 the mine suddenly and surprisingly closed, with officials stating that there was a flood and they couldn’t mine any further.
Conspiracy theorists and diamond dealers didn’t believe it though, with them floating around a variety of other theories.
For years, the massive hole lay abandoned. The airspace above it was also restricted, as the sheer depth of the mine meant small aircraft and helicopters could get sucked in.
This is because when the cold air from the surface meets the heated air coming from the bowels of the mine, it creates a vortex powerful enough to suck things down into its depths.
During its initial run, the mine produced $13billion (£2.3billion) worth of diamonds.
The mine was recommissioned in 2009 and is expected to remain operational for 50 more years.
It isn’t free from controversy and intrigue though, as it flooded again in 2017, trapping over 140 miners, all but 8 of whom were rescued.
The Mirny diamond mine remains a mysterious vortex, a seemingly-bottomless pit that once produced more than half of the world’s diamonds.
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