**By Duncan Geere, Wired UKA team of exometeorologists at MIT have calculated the size of the snowflakes that fall onto the polar regions of Mars in its winter, and it turns out that they're pretty tiny.
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**By Duncan Geere, Wired UKA team of exometeorologists at MIT have calculated the size of the snowflakes that fall onto the polar regions of Mars in its winter, and it turns out that they're pretty tiny.
[partner id="wireduk"] Mars' weak atmosphere is comprised almost entirely of carbon dioxide, and during the chilly -87C winters on the red planet, it gets cold enough for particles of snow to form. Except that it's not snow as we know it, which is made of water crystals. Instead, it's dry ice – frozen crystals of carbon dioxide.
Using data from orbiting spacecraft, MIT researchers found that the crystals are about the size of a red blood cell – eight 