What would I prefer for my intellect and curiousity to be slaked?

As I said before (is there an echo in here?), I'd prefer higher resolution shots (this shot seemed quite grainy). What I'd really prefer (eventually) would be an actual ROVER able to roll up to the "lake" and point a camera at it and snap photos. Either it will show fluids, or it wont' show fluids. And perhaps, the rover can take a sample and analyze it with a spectrometer or some other scientific tools to determine what it actually is composed of, and settle the debate definitively. Guesswork is nice, actual mesurement up close and personal are better.

As I said, this image is just a Rorschach test of what people want to see.

As to what other solutions there might be to the "smooth crater" dilemma. As I said EDM (electrical discharge machining, use d in labs on Earth) is known to cause round, smooth-walled craters in the lab. For all we know these could be electrically sculpted features of an electrically active planet...

If there are channels leading the fluids to the area, let me ask this, how did the depression get there? If all roads lead to the lake, where did the mass that used to be in the lake (soil, rock, whatever) go? How did the lake(s) get formed by methane drizzle or condensation?

Did an impactor hit the area and eject material? Doesn't look consistent with an impact (though I could be wrong).

Just wondering where the mass of rocks and soil went that used to be in the lake? I'd be interested to know Nasa's explanation for that, considering that the inflow channels are all considerably shallower than the lake. Even if one or more were outflow channels, that wouldn't really explain where the mass from the bottom of the lake went. Did it somehow roll up the side against gravity?

Seriously, how do two lakes (large depressions) get formed in the middle of what APPEARS to be an otherwise flat and ground-level terrain by channels no where near as deep as the lake(s)? Is there a known mechanism for this? Or has Nasa invented one? Or does nobody really have a clear idea? Just wondering.

But, let's not start introducing lots of unknown hypothetical entities or processes to account for the missing mass of the lakes, lest you violate Occam's Razor yourself...

(IE, don't introduce more entities than is reasonably required to explain it. We've already got theoretical methane/ethane rain/drizzle, erosion channels, lakes. Now what do we have to add to haev CARVED these lakes which are far deeper than the erosion channels in/out [as far as we can ee in the picture]?)

Electricity is a very powerful force (and a single entity; a single entity would be favored by the Razor of Occam over multiple interacting entities which must all interact thus giving more places for experimental error).

Given sufficient power instantly (or slowly over time), it could certainly excavate said features... And the walls would be quite smooth, aside perhaps from where ejecta dropped back or or whatever... Fairly simple. Just requires sufficient power if it's a 1-time event, or smaller amounts of power on a repeated basis for several carving events over time (and on second look like does look like several cratering events caused the depression with several partial circular arc sections along the edges). The smoothness feature is easily explained by arcing...

(good articles explaining EDM processes, including arcing, dielectric breakdown, plasma implosion and subsequent expulsion of materials as spherules, etc. etc. Keep in mind they're referring to "controlled" EDM in the lab, some some of the bits might not apply to "wild" EDM in nature, and EDM likely takes on different forms when it occurs naturally. You might get a clean crater, you might get a channel, multi-channel systems like the photo of lightning arc scarring on the sidewalk, etc.)
http://biblion.epfl.ch/EPFL/theses/2006/3542/EPFL_TH3542.pdf

http://www.prod.sandia.gov/cgi-bin/techlib/access-control.pl/2005/055023.pdf

(very basic description of how they utilize electricity in the lab for cutting. I think what I said above would be more akin to the die-sink version than the wire cut version. Though, in nature it would be considerably less controlled in the case of lightning, etc. Lightning can be considerably more capricious than lab machinery)
http://www.agieus.com/products/understanding_EDM.asp

(A decent article. Also deals with some of the changes to surfaces due to EDM, and also show how microcratering can occur over a large area from a single EDM stroke consisting of several individual smaller strokes each creating their own craters.)
http://www.reliableedm.com/Complete%20EDM%20Handbook/Complete%20EDM%20Handbook_11.pdf

(Great little article about the evolution of arc discharge use and observation in science... including arc scarring, circular machining/cratering, etc. Funny, they even have a line where a scientist upon noticing the craters remarked they looked like "cavities, like those on the moon ..." See figure 6 on the very last page. Nice cratering "like that of the moon." But definitely produced electrically here on Earth. Granted, it's on the micro scale, 'cause the energies involved were relatively small. Nonetheless, this is what I'm talking about. Note all the craters on Mars, the moon, etc. etc. many look very suspiciously like this... Just on a much grander scale.)
http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/servlets/purl/823201-oEL59M/native/823201.pdf#search=%22electrical%20discharge%20machining%20smooth%20craters%22

(Discusses EDM in decent detail. Again applied mostly toward lab work, but provides a few mildly interesting picture, sadly nothing much photographed about cratering, though it does show a few bit of cracking or rifting due to the arcing and rehardening process.)
<ahref="http://www.bucorp.com/files/UddeholmEDMofToolSteel.pdf">http://www.bucorp.com/files/UddeholmEDMofToolSteel.pdf

(Minor article/abstract on EDM. Mentioned that EDM'd curfaces generally consist of craters and peaks. [Not mentioned specifically in THIS article, but often craters appear with a central spire or rounded lump that wasn't fully machined. This is seen frequently on Mars and elsewhere: craters with plateaus or bumps in the middle.] The pictures aren't particularly great in this article though.)
http://www.unl.edu/nmrc/WireEDM/Surface%20integrity/wiresurf.htm

(Decent page on EDM info, includes a very short section on theories of how the material gets ejected in EDM processes.)
http://www.unl.edu/nmrc/EDMresearch.htm

(Or there's electro-chemical machining, if you want to go there, though I think it's less of a fit and more complex thank spark machining.)
http://www.unl.edu/nmrc/ECMoutline.htm

(Includes an article on EDM toward the bottom toward not entirely technical folks. Not terribly interesting if you've alreqady read the above stuff that's more detailed/complete.)
http://www.tinaja.com/glib/hack60.pdf

Actually, as I look closely around the edges of the "lakes" on close-up, the bottom right appear to be composed of 2-3 overlapping circles, discernable by points protruding into the bulk of the lake. Between the protruding points are formed nearly perfectly circular arcs. The very lower right hand corner is a fairly large circular area which appears to be lined up with the small arc and point just above it, intersection/overlapping the gouge that travels from lower right to upper left sideof the "lake" (and was probably carved BEFORE the lake-carving event(s) ). Just to the lower left side of the larger circle is another arc, which if tken as a circle out into the bulk of the lake would be appx 1/3 the size of the circle traced by the very lower right arc.

See what I'm saying? A lot of these features appear to overlapping circular features, which (personally) I think would be more consistent with EDM than with fluid erosion. With EDM processes, we would expect circular cratering around an arc sufficient to vaporize or eject the material. And several overlapping cratering events can cause oddly shaped formations like this that still retain those circular bits, protruding. Though I'm not super familiar with EDM enough to make predictions, from what i've read, one might even expect to see even smaller cratering events, or micro-cratering along the floor and walls, as you take closer pictures.

Anywho, read the articles, look at this picture and others, and make your own minds up. Most will probably still say "well, it's gotta' be methane/ethane"... Fine, no worries. Not necessarily here to sway anyone, just to put an alternate not-often-considered idea out there. If nobody ever says it, nobody else will really ever think about it, even if to simply explore and dismiss (though, hopefully not outright dismiss without even looking at the data through a different set of eyes).