Hi Nick,

Glad you took a look.

However, it is typical of the "Water on Mars" school that if something looks like water on Earth, it MUST be water on Mars.

Yep, water on the brain.

. I will look into some of these areas over the next (long) while and see if any ideas pop out.

I think that the significance of the paper lies more in the data they gathered and their basic analysis of it, e.g. geographical distribution, than the conclusions they draw. I hope the data turns out to be grist for your mill.

To editorialize a bit: Seems to me that data gathering and basic analysis is the sort of thing amateurs can do well; but they need to work with professionals on the conclusions.

They raised some interesting questions, at least, that seem to fairly well define the problem space: What accounts for the apparent variation of color of successive streaks? The uniformity of color along the streak? What causes the color change in the first place? Why do they always emanate from a point source? Why, if this is caused by a fluid, do the streaks maintain "cohesiveness" and not break up into dendritic channels? And the biggie: What about the geographic distribution, eh?

I look forward to your answers to these riddles post haste [:-{}]....

--Robert