Your Syrtis Springs pictures are almost convincing...

and should be undergoing rigorous study. If these are not evidence of present-day springs on Mars than what are they? Seems that many of the issues we once addressed on the MSNBC space news board have received some scrutiny by the field.

Of course Nick Hoffman will come along and pooh-pooh it all because that is what he does.

Apparently he believes that all of Mars, through and through, is and has almost always been way too cold for water to flow.

Except when under bombardment by celestial projectiles.

Fine. He's almost certainly wrong. But his error is useful because it forces people to think about how water behaves under Martian conditions, and it is nothing like water's behavior under the benign conditions of Earth.

Nick is probably right that Mars has almost always been cold (at the surface), and in the past was probably colder than it is now. There was probably never an ocean at the surface that we would recognize as such -- open stretches of fluid water. Atmospheric pressure was probably lower not higher in the past, so standing and flowing open water was less likely rather than more likely in times gone by (with some exceptions, of course).

What happens when you put a decent ice cover on a pool of surface Mars water, though? For heaven's sake! The pool -- or flow -- can last a good long time, provided temperatures remain cold enough to preserve the ice cap. At the equator of Mars today, temperatures rise too high too often to permit ice to remain at the surface for any length of time. Yet there seem to be deposits of ice at the equator nonetheless. http://skyandtelescope.com/news/current/article_600_1.asp Likely the ice is replenished from subsurface flows.

Thus a reasonable explanation of your Syrtis Springs. Subsurface aquatic reservoirs are all but certain, despite Nick Hoffman's cranky (but always illuminating!) nay-saying, so what would happen when this water makes its way to the surface, which it assuredly must?

In other words, how does water behave under Martian surface conditions? Seems to me that if it were hot and under pressure it would explosively vent, spectacular geysering, possibly on a massive scale. Look at some of those light toned craters and formations in Acidalia, for example. Note that their internal deposits appear to have once been fluid. Note the extended and presumably once fluid ejecta. Note what appears to be material venting from the cracks in the large crater floor material. Note the rounded crater rims. Note the white deposits all around and within the craters. Could these have once been geysers, massive vents of water? Why not? Formations like this could be venting right now. Or venting could occur episodically depending on internal heating.

Of course it all may be an illusion!

Cheers, B R Felix