The underground laboratory of the Permafrost Institute in Yakutsk - one of the most popular tourist sites of the city. This unique structure was founded in 1961. The main task of the institute - a comprehensive study of the permafrost, the history of its formation and development, the study of the composition and structure of permafrost.

Premises underground laboratory were made in the sandy deposits of the Lena River. The upper gallery is located at a depth of 5 m, bottom - 12 meters, and the lowest point at a depth of 15 m. The excavation of galleries and chambers underground laboratory made special drilling and blasting. The walls and floor were lined with using jackhammers. The width of the bottom of the gallery is about 3 to 5 m height - 2, 5 m, and a length of about 30 m. The upper gallery has approximately the same dimensions.

Almost all the experiments that were carried out in the underground laboratory was required low temperatures. To this end, the lower gallery laid on the horizon of zero amplitude fluctuations in temperature of frozen ground just under the Permafrost Institute. The temperature at the bottom of the gallery in summer and winter remains virtually unchanged around -4 ° ... -5 ° C. Regarding the relative humidity in the laboratory premises, it ranges from 70% to 100%.

There are solid range of studies permafrost soil properties and processes that occur in them at the human impact and in vivo. The underground laboratory of the Permafrost Institute determined the age of frozen soil, their filtration, thermal, acoustic and mechanical properties, grain size, and so on.

On the basis of this unique underground laboratory carried out a number of fundamental works on the study of the mechanical properties of ice, frozen soil creep and physico-mechanical properties and the thawing of frozen soils of Yakutia. These studies are used for the design and construction of hydraulic structures, residential and industrial buildings, pipelines and roads.

In addition, an underground laboratory in the chamber for a while kept the body found in 1977 mammoth Dima, his dummy can now be seen in the upper gallery of the laboratory.