On Monday, August 21st, a huge phenomenon took place - and no, I'm not talking about the solar eclipse. In fact, I'm talking about another planet in our solar system, Mars.

Scientists just recently discovered that it snows on Mars, but not in the traditional way we are used to. Rather than having an area completely covered, the soil on Mars has "ice microbursts", something that usually only happens in the shadows. Imagine throwing snowballs with no snow on the ground. Where they land are the microbursts of ice on Mars.

Now imagine that the clouds are only 0.61-1.24 miles above the ground. That's how low the clouds need to be in order for the snow to reach the ground. Anything higher and the snow will melt before it reaches the surface. This happens because the air pressure increases rapidly as the snow heads downwards, which leads to higher temperatures.

Up until Monday, scientists thought that "snow precipitation occurs only by the slow sedimentation of individual particles," the authors of this experiment explain. However, their research indicates otherwise.

At night on Mars, temperatures can reach to as low as -195 degrees Fahrenheit. In the mornings, the Sun warms up the surface just enough that the water can evaporate and rise into clouds, which then produce the snow.

Mars also has ice caps that are helping to produce the snow. There are more ice caps on Mars than there are in Greenland. However, these ice caps are solely made up of frozen carbon dioxide.

The condition of the atmosphere on Mars is so extreme right now, no one but robots can explore these amazing findings. The weather conditions are also so unstable that snow, as we know, cannot fall to the ground in Mars.

The snow was only found due to "the Mars Phoenix lander, who spotted it at night using LIDAR laser sounding," Spiga told IFLScience, way back in 2008. However, it never reached the ground until now. And it might be seasonal.

While Mars remains uninhabitable, these findings exemplify how we one day could possibly colonize another planet.