Tough crowd today, huh Mr. Civilizations?
It is certainly an interesting pattern, and
I hope that there really is water on Mars.
Tough room? That’s every day here on FR. ;’)
There’s some water ice locked up in the soil. These patterns of erosion result from impacts from space — the energy melts the ice to vapor, which produces a temporary microclimate, allowing liquid water to flow. As the vapor dissipates, everything re-freezes. That accounts for the from-nowhere-to-nowhere patterns.