BBC news

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

cones... like those things we have at the see bed? black smokers or something is that what they mean by cones?

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GCS/S d(+) s+:+ a--- C++(+++)>$ W+++>$ L>+ M+>++ w++ P+>++ tv@ PS b+ DI+ G e-> h! r-- !z+

~Jorge Schrauwen

No, cones like cinder cones.

See this image.

Everyone is not convinced that they are volcanic origin, though.

But if they are active volcanos, it would be important discovery since there are a lot of water ice in the northern polar region and thus possibly liquid water underground. Not too bad conditions for possible subsurface life.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

I guess neither rover can detect marsquakes, eh?

Right.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

It would help to explain why there is excess methane as well. I would think a close investigation of one of the "active" cones would be a priority for the next lander.

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All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

Problem is that no sulfur dioxide has ever been detected on Mars. On Earth, the amount of methane emitted by volcanoes is tiny compared to sulphur.

Most likely the methane comes from olivine and pyroxine reacting with water (correct me if I'm wrong).

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

I tend to agree with you (non-expert opinion) about the methane from the water reactions, but do we know enough about the chemistry of Martian magma to know if the sulfur dioxide and methane concentrations would be correlated? Could the sulfur dioxide released (if any) react with Martian minerals (all those lovely iron ores) and get bound up? IIRC some of the Martian rocks the rovers have looked at have been sulfates.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

Damn!

Nature: Martian methane probe in trouble

The Planetary Fourier Spectrometer on the Mars Express orbiter seems to be broken.

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman