title: Eric Cartman

text: In keeping with the show's animation style, Cartman is composed of simple geometrical shapes and primary colors. He is not offered the same free range of motion associated with hand-drawn characters; his character is mostly shown from one direction, and his movements intentionally jerky. Ever since the show's second episode, "Weight Gain 4000" (season one, 1997), Cartman, like all other characters on the show, has been animated with computer software, though he is portrayed to give the impression that the show still utilizes its original technique.


title: Eric Cartman

text: Cartman is usually depicted wearing winter attire which consists of a red coat, brown pants, yellow gloves/mittens, and a yellow-brimmed turquoise knit cap tapered with a yellow pom-pom. He has parted brown hair, and he is seen without his hat more often than the other characters with distinctive headwear. As he is overweight, his body is wider and his hands noticeably larger than those of the other children, and his head is more elliptical. An additional curved line on his lower face represents a double chin.


title: Eric Cartman

text: Parker adduced that he came up with the voice of Cartman while he and Stone were in film class, where they would speak in high-pitched childish voices, which was quite irksome to their film teachers. They would naturally reproduce these voices in the initial seasons of "South Park". Although he had originally voiced Cartman without any computer manipulation, Parker now does so by speaking within his normal vocal range with a childlike inflection. The recorded audio is then edited with Pro Tools, and the pitch is altered to make the voice sound like that of a fourth grader. Parker says to achieve the effect of Cartman's voice, he simply uses the same technique when voicing Stan while "adding a lot of fat to it".


title: Eric Cartman

text: Cartman is partially named after and based on Matt Karpman, a high school classmate of Parker who remains a friend of both Parker and Stone. Cartman is also inspired to some degree by "All in the Family" patriarch Archie Bunker, who is himself inspired by Alf Garnett from "Till Death Us Do Part", the original British version of "All in the Family". Parker and Stone are reportedly big fans of "All in the Family". They alleged in 2008 that creating Cartman as a "little eight-year-old fat kid" made it easier for the two to portray a Bunker-like character after the introduction of political correctness to late-20th century television. While developing the character, Parker noted that everyone either remembers "an annoying fat kid in their pasts", or "they were the annoying fat kid". Stone has observed that "kids are not nice, innocent, flower-loving little rainbow children ... they don't have any kind of social tact or etiquette, they're just complete little raging bastards".


title: Eric Cartman

text: In the season five (2001) episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die", Cartman is tricked into buying the pubic hair of a local ninth-grader named Scott Tenorman for $16.12. He then successfully executes an elaborate scheme to publicly humiliate Scott in front of his favorite band Radiohead, by getting Scott's parents killed and then tricking Scott into eating them. The show's writers debated during production of the episode whether or not the incident would be "a step too far, even for Cartman". Parker felt that the act could sufficiently be the culmination of Cartman's sociopathic behavior, and would "[set] a new bar" by portraying Cartman as being capable of performing anything short of murder. Fans reacted by ranking it as Cartman's "greatest moment" in a 2005 poll on Comedy Central's website. It is later revealed in the season fourteen episode "201" that Jack Tenorman, Scott's father, was a football player for the Denver Broncos who impregnated Cartman's mom, therefore making him Cartman's father too.


title: Eric Cartman

text: Parker and Stone, despite being the basis for Stan and Kyle, insist that Cartman is their favorite character, and the one with whom they identify the most.


title: Eric Cartman

text: Cartman uses profanity (as do his friends) to provide a means for Parker and Stone to portray how they believe young boys really talk when they are alone. According to Parker, Cartman does not possess the "underlying sweetness" of the show's other child characters. Cartman is shown at times to be completely amoral and remorseless. Cartman, as with Stan Marsh and Kyle Broflovski, is amused by bodily functions and toilet humor, and his favorite television personalities are Terrance and Phillip, a Canadian duo whose comedy routines on their show-within-the-show revolve substantially around fart jokes.


title: Eric Cartman

text: Cartman is sensitive and in denial about his obesity. Often reasserting Liane's notion by exclaiming "I'm not fat, I'm big-boned!" and will just as often either threaten to bring harm to anyone who mocks his weight or curse them out in aggravation. He has also had people killed; after his psychiatrist mocked his weight, Cartman framed the man as a pedophile to his wife, causing her to commit suicide. He views himself as more mature than his fellow friends and classmates, and often grows impatient with their company; despite claiming to be more mature, he will often break down crying childishly and pathetically whenever he feels defeated. This often leads to loud arguments, which in earlier seasons typically end with Cartman peevishly saying "Screw you guys ... I'm going home!" and then leaving. In an action King's College philosophy professor David Kyle Johnson describes as "directed either toward accomplishing his own happiness or the unhappiness of others", Cartman often feigns actual friendship with his classmates when needing a favor. The lack of a true father figure in his life, and Liane's promiscuity and drug use have caused repressed psychological hardship in Cartman's life. As a parent, Liane often spoils Cartman, and is largely ineffectual as a disciplinarian. Cartman sometimes commands his mom to do tasks for him, but more often resorts to pleading with her in an ingratiating tone. When neither method works, he resorts to excessive and indecipherable whining, to which Liane usually succumbs. Parker has noted that this is the primary cause for Cartman's behavior, stating that Cartman is "just a product of his environment".


title: Eric Cartman

text: Cartman thrives on achieving ascendancy over others, and exerts his will by demagogy and by demanding that others "Respect my authoritah!" Cartman has several times declared that his dream is getting "Ten million dollars", and that if he got it he would be "so happy". He has shown initiative in taking a businesslike approach to earning money, starting his own "hippie control" and "parental revenge" operations, as well as a Christian Rock and a boy band, a basketball team of crack babies (parody of the NCAA) and his own church.


title: Eric Cartman

text: Cartman's anti-Semitism, while mostly limited to mocking Kyle, culminates in the season eight episode "The Passion of the Jew". In the episode, Cartman, after watching "The Passion of the Christ" numerous times, deifies the film's director, Mel Gibson, and starts an official Gibson fan club, praising Gibson for "trying to express—through cinema—the horror and filthiness of the common Jew". Cartman's interpretation of the film influences him to dress up as Adolf Hitler and lead other fan club members (who are oblivious of Cartman's actual intentions) in a failed effort to engage in a systematic genocide of the Jews similar to that of the Final Solution. In the season 10 episode "Smug Alert!", Cartman anonymously saves Kyle's life in an effort to get him and his family to return to South Park from San Francisco, revealing that he craves the animosity shared between the two. Cartman later directs the "evil god" Cthulhu to destroy "most of the synagogues" during the season 14 episode "Coon vs. Coon and Friends".


title: Eric Cartman

text: Upon hearing his classmates tell him that they hold him in the lowest regard possible and that they could not possibly think any worse of him, a stubborn Cartman misinterprets this act as their attempt to make him feel better, and convinces himself that everyone thinks he is the "coolest kid in school". In the season 13 (2009) episode "Fishsticks", Cartman subconsciously believes that he helped in creating a joke that quickly becomes a nationwide sensation, despite the fact that the character Jimmy Valmer writes the joke without any assistance. Carlos Delgado of "If Magazine" noted this as "Cartman being so egotistical that he manipulates the past to serve his own purposes".


title: Eric Cartman

text: Though he is commonly portrayed as having a chauvinist disrespect for foreign cultures, Cartman is shown at least twice ("My Future Self n' Me" and "Pandemic") to be able to speak fluent Spanish (and German).


title: Eric Cartman

text: Cartman is a "South Park" fan favorite, and is often described as the most famous character from the series as well as having a significant influence on comedy and culture. With a headline to their online written version of a radio report, NPR declared Cartman as "America's Favorite Little $@#&*%". "Respect my authoritah!" and "Screw you guys ... I'm going home!" became catchphrases and, during the show's earlier seasons, were highly popular in the lexicon of viewers. His eccentric enunciation of "Hey!" was included in the 2002 edition of "The Oxford Dictionary of Catchphrases". Stone has said that when fans recognize him or Parker, the fans will usually do their imitation of Cartman, or, in Parker's case, request that he do Cartman's voice.


title: Eric Cartman

text: In 2005, Comedy Central ran a three-night marathon of episodes showcasing what voters had deemed to be his "25 greatest moments". A two-disc DVD collection entitled "The Cult of Cartman", which Comedy Central described as "12 classic episodes with Cartman at his very worst!", was released in 2008.


title: Eric Cartman

text: In a 1999 poll conducted by NatWest Bank, eight and nine-year-old children in the United Kingdom voted Cartman as their favorite personality. This drew the concern of several parent councils who were expecting a character from a television show aimed at children to top the list, to which Stone responded by claiming the results of the poll were "upsetting to people who have an idyllic vision of what kids are like".


title: Eric Cartman

text: While some in the Jewish community have praised the show's depiction of Cartman holding an anti-Semitic attitude towards Kyle as a means of accurately portraying what it is like for a young Jew to have to endure prejudice, other Jews have blamed "South Park" and Cartman for having found themselves surrounded by "acceptable racism". On November 20, 2008, a Facebook group titled "National Kick a Ginger Day, are you going to do it?" surfaced, suggesting abuse towards redheads. Thousands of internet users signed up as a member of the group, and reports of a feared increase of bullying of red-headed students across Canada soon followed. The group's administrator, a 14-year-old from Vancouver Island, said the group was only intended as a joke, and apologized for the offense it caused. The group was inspired by the season nine (2005) episode "Ginger Kids", in which Cartman incites prejudice towards those with red hair, pale skin, and freckles, a group he calls "Gingers" and claims are inherently evil and without souls. A YouTuber, Coppercab, was deeply offended by Cartman's belittlement to gingers. Cartman recreated one of Coppercab's videos, complete with looking like a ginger child, acting crazy, and saying that gingers "do" have souls.


title: Eric Cartman

text: Other characters commonly express lessons learned from the antagonistic actions Cartman commonly provokes; this has resulted in these characters giving their opinions on issues such as hate crime legislation, civil liberties, excessive religious devotion, the stem cell controversy, anabolic steroid use, the "right to die" debate, and prejudice. In the season 10 (2006) episode "Cartoon Wars Part II", Cartman, planning to exploit the public's fear of terrorism, seeks to get the Fox television series "Family Guy", a program he despises, permanently removed from the airwaves when Fox plans to air an episode despite its inclusion of a cartoon likeness of Muhammad. This leads Kyle to give a short speech about the ethics of censorship, which reiterates Parker and Stone's sentiments of "Either it's all okay, or none of it is" in regards to whether or not any subject should remain off-limits to satire. Both Cartman's commentary and the commentary resulting in response to his actions have been interpreted as statements Parker and Stone are attempting to make to the viewing public, and these opinions have been subject to much critical analysis in the media and literary world.


title: Eric Cartman

text: The book "" includes an essay in which Johnson uses Cartman's actions and behavior as examples when discussing the logical problem of moral evil, and another essay by College of Staten Island professor Mark D. White cited the season two (1998) episode "Chickenlover", in which Cartman is temporarily granted law enforcement powers, in its discussion regarding the command theory of law and what obligates a citizen to obey the law. Essays in the books "", "Blame Canada! South Park and Contemporary Culture", and "Taking South Park Seriously" have also analyzed Cartman's perspectives within the framework of popular philosophical, theological, political, and social concepts. Parker and Stone downplay the show's alignment with any particular political affiliation, and deny having a political agenda when creating an episode. In response to the focus on elements of satire in "South Park", Parker has said that the main goal of the show is to portray Cartman and his friends as "kids just being kids" as a means of accurately showcasing "what it's like to be in [elementary school] in America".


title: Eric Cartman

text: "TV Guide" ranked Cartman at number 10 on their 2002 list of the "Top 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters", 24th on TV Guide's "25 Greatest TV Villains", 198th on VH1's "200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons", and 19th on Bravo's "100 Greatest TV Characters" television special in 2004. When declaring him the second-scariest character on television (behind only Mr. Burns of "The Simpsons") in 2005, MSNBC's Brian Bellmont described Cartman as a "bundle of pure, unadulterated evil all wrapped up in a fat—er, big-boned—cartoony package" who "takes a feral delight in his evildoing". In 2014, "IGN" ranked Cartman first place on their list of "The Top 25 South Park Characters", commenting that he was "the obvious choice" of number one and that "sometimes the obvious choice is also the right one." The website stated that despite Cartman being "one of the worst human beings in the history of fiction ... he's the most loathsome character we've ever loved." "IGN" concluded by calling him "the biggest contribution to the world of animated characters that South Park has made – and that's saying something." In 2020, "Paste" ranked Cartman as #17 of their "The 50 Best Cartoon Characters of All Time".


title: Nikki Catsouras photographs controversy

text: The Nikki Catsouras photographs controversy concerns the leaked photographs of Nicole "Nikki" Catsouras (March 4, 1988 – October 31, 2006), who died at the age of 18 in a high speed car crash after losing control of her father's Porsche 911 Carrera and colliding with a toll booth in Lake Forest, California. Photographs of Catsouras' badly disfigured body were published on the internet, leading her family to take legal action for the distress this caused.


title: Nikki Catsouras photographs controversy

text: On October 31, 2006, Catsouras and her parents ate lunch together at the family home in Ladera Ranch, California. Afterward, her father, Christos Catsouras, left for work while her mother Lesli remained at home. Around 10 minutes later, her mother saw Catsouras reversing out of the driveway in Christos' Porsche 911 Carrera, which she was not permitted to drive. Lesli called her husband and he began driving around trying to find his daughter. While doing so, he called 9-1-1, apparently minutes before the accident, and was put on hold. When he was taken off hold the dispatcher informed him of the accident.


title: Nikki Catsouras photographs controversy

text: Catsouras was traveling on the 241 Toll Road in Lake Forest at approximately 1:38 pm, when she clipped a Honda Civic that she was attempting to pass on the right at over . The Porsche crossed the road's broad median, which lacks a physical barrier on that segment, and crashed into an unmanned concrete toll booth near the Alton Parkway interchange. Catsouras was killed on impact. Toxicological tests revealed traces of cocaine in Catsouras' body, but no alcohol.


title: Nikki Catsouras photographs controversy

text: According to "Newsweek", the Catsouras "accident was so gruesome the coroner wouldn't allow her parents to identify their daughter's body". Photographs of the scene were taken by California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers as part of standard fatal traffic collision procedures. These photographs were forwarded to colleagues and leaked onto the Internet.


title: Nikki Catsouras photographs controversy

text: Two CHP employees, Aaron Reich and Thomas O'Donnell, admitted to releasing the photographs in violation of CHP policy. O'Donnell stated in interviews that he only sent the photos to his own e-mail account for viewing at a later time, while Reich stated that he had forwarded the pictures to four other people. Catsouras' parents discovered the photographs posted online. The pictures had gained much attention, including a fake MySpace tribute website that contained links to the photographs. People anonymously e-mailed copies of the photos to the Catsouras family with misleading subject headers, in one case captioning the photo sent to the father with the words "Woohoo Daddy! Hey daddy, I'm still alive." This led the Catsouras family to withdraw from Internet use and, concerned that their youngest daughter might be taunted with the photographs, to begin homeschooling her.


title: Nikki Catsouras photographs controversy

text: The online harassment aspects of the case were covered by Werner Herzog in his 2016 documentary "Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World".


title: Nikki Catsouras photographs controversy

text: The Catsouras family sued the California Highway Patrol and the two dispatch supervisors responsible for leaking the photographs in the Superior Court of California for Orange County. Initially, a judge ruled that it would be appropriate to move forward with the family's legal case against the CHP for leaking the photographs.


title: Nikki Catsouras photographs controversy

text: An internal investigation led the CHP to issue a formal apology and take action to prevent similar occurrences in the future, after discovering that departmental policy had been violated by the two dispatch supervisors. O'Donnell was suspended for 25 days without pay, and Reich quit soon after, "for unrelated reasons", according to his lawyer. When the defendants moved for summary judgment, Judge Steven L. Perk dismissed the case against the Department of the California Highway Patrol after both Reich and O'Donnell were removed as defendants. Judge Perk ruled that the two were not under any responsibility for protecting the privacy of the Catsouras family, effectively ending the basis for the case. The superior court judge who dismissed the case ruled in March 2008 that while the dispatchers' conduct was "utterly reprehensible", there was no law that allowed it to be punishable.


title: Nikki Catsouras photographs controversy

text: The CHP sent websites "cease and desist" notices in an effort to get the photos off the Internet. The Catsouras family hired ReputationDefender to help remove the photos, to little avail. The organization estimated it had persuaded websites to remove 2,500 instances of the photos, but conceded that complete removal from the internet would be impossible. Attorney and blogger Ted Frank wrote that even though the media were sympathetic to the parents' plight, "the Streisand effect has resulted in far more dissemination of the gruesome photos".


title: Nikki Catsouras photographs controversy

text: On February 1, 2010, it was reported that the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth District had reversed Judge Perk's grant of summary judgment, and instead ruled that the Catsouras family did have the right to sue the defendants for negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Calling the actions of O'Donnell and Reich "vulgar" and "morally deficient", the court stated:


title: Nikki Catsouras photographs controversy

text: We rely upon the CHP to protect and serve the public. It is antithetical to that expectation for the CHP to inflict harm upon us by making the ravaged remains of our loved ones the subject of Internet sensationalism ... O'Donnell and Reich owed the plaintiffs a duty not to exploit CHP-acquired evidence in such a manner as to place them at foreseeable risk of grave emotional distress.


title: Nikki Catsouras photographs controversy

text: On May 25, 2011, the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth District ruled that Aaron Reich failed to prove that e-mailing the photographs is covered by the First Amendment. Reich claimed that he e-mailed the photographs as a caution about the dangers of drunk driving because he e-mailed the pictures with an anti-drunk driving message, despite Catsouras' postmortem examination revealing a blood alcohol content of zero. The three-justice panel that reviewed Reich's appeal wrote, "Any editorial comments that Reich may have made with respect to the photographs are not before us. In short, there is no evidence at this point that the e-mails were sent to communicate on the topic of drunk driving." The justices questioned whether the recipients still retained the e-mails, but Reich's attorney conceded that they had not investigated this.


title: Nikki Catsouras photographs controversy

text: On January 30, 2012, the CHP reached a settlement with the Catsouras family, under which the family received around $2.37 million in damages. CHP spokeswoman Fran Clader commented: "No amount of money can compensate for the pain the Catsouras family has suffered. We have reached a resolution with the family to save substantial costs of continued litigation and a jury trial. It is our hope that with this legal issue resolved, the Catsouras family can receive some closure."


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario () is the largest city in the central Argentine province of Santa Fe. The city is located northwest of Buenos Aires, on the west bank of the Paraná River. Rosario is the third-most populous city in the country, and is also the most populous city in Argentina that is not a capital (provincial or national). With a growing and important metropolitan area, Greater Rosario has an estimated population of 1,750,000 . One of its main attractions includes the neoclassical, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco architecture that has been retained over the centuries in hundreds of residences, houses and public buildings.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario is the head city of the Rosario Department and is located at the heart of the major industrial corridor in Argentina. The city is a major railroad terminal and the shipping center for north-eastern Argentina. Ships reach the city via the Paraná River, which allows the existence of a port. The Port of Rosario is subject to silting and must be dredged periodically. Exports include wheat, flour, hay, linseed and other vegetable oils, corn, sugar, lumber, meat, hides, and wool. Manufactured goods include flour, sugar, meat products, and other foodstuffs. The Rosario-Victoria Bridge, opened in 2004, spans the Paraná River, connecting Rosario with the city of Victoria, across the Paraná Delta. The city plays a critical role in agricultural commerce, and thus finds itself at the center of a continuing debate over taxes levied on big-ticket agricultural goods such as soy.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Along with Paraná, Rosario is one of the few Argentine cities that cannot point to a particular individual as its founder. The city's patron is the "Virgin of the Rosary", whose feast day is October 7.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Even though the city did not have a clear foundation date or any official acknowledgement thereof, most commentators state that Rosario was founded on 7 October 1793 with a local population of 457 inhabitants. Nonetheless, the town was officially declared a "city" on 3 August 1852, at the time it was known as Pago de los Arroyos, that is, "land of the streams", a reference to the several small rivers that traverse the southern region of Santa Fe, like the Ludueña Stream, the Saladillo Stream and others, emptying into the Paraná River. In 1689, captain Luís Romero de Piñeda received part of the lands of the Pago de los Arroyos by royal decree, as payment for services to the Spanish Crown. Before that, the area was originally inhabited by various indigenous tribes, some of which lived in "reducciones", a type of mission founded by Franciscans. These missions were ultimately attacked and destroyed by hostile tribes of the Chaco region.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Romero de Piñeda established the first permanent settlement, an "estancia" — intended as farmland, not as a town. In 1719, the Jesuits bought another part and established "Estancia San Miguel". The area was still so scarcely populated that it had no central authority; it was ruled from the provincial capital (Santa Fe), and in turn from Buenos Aires.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: In 1724, another colonial settlement was initiated by Santiago de Montenegro, who set up a mill, drew plans for the future town, built a chapel, and was appointed mayor in 1751. The area of control of this local government extended northward from today's Rosario; only in 1784 was it divided into two smaller jurisdictions.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: On February 27, 1812, General Manuel Belgrano raised the newly created Argentine flag on the shores of the Paraná, for the first time. Because of this, Rosario is known as the "Cradle of the Argentine Flag". The National Flag Memorial marks the occasion.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The province of Santa Fe suffered greatly from the civil war that afflicted Argentina after 1820. Demographic growth was relatively slow. During this period, Rosario was a small settlement and a stop on the way from the city of Santa Fe to Buenos Aires. In 1823, it was elevated to the category of "village" ("Ilustre y Fiel Villa del Rosario"). Charles Darwin travelled through the area in 1832 and described Rosario as "a large town" with about 2,000 residents. In 1841, a decree of the "caudillo" and Governor of Buenos Aires, Juan Manuel de Rosas, banned navigation of the Paraná and Paraguay rivers to non-Argentine vessels, and thus shut off the Port of Rosario to foreign trade.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: On 25 December 1851, a small group of locals and the military guard of the city declared their support for the rival "caudillo" Justo José de Urquiza. As a reward for their participation in the Battle of Caseros, triumphant Urquiza wrote to the governor of Santa Fe on 9 June 1852 asking for Rosario to be granted city status. Governor Domingo Crespo justified the request at the provincial legislative body, marking the geographically strategic position of the town for national and international trade, and on 5 August, Rosario was formally declared a city.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Urquiza opened up the river for free international trade. The city's economy and population expanded at an accelerated rate. By 1880, Rosario had become the first export outlet of Argentina. During the last 15 years of the 19th century, the city more than doubled its population, in part due to immigration. By 1887 it had about 50,000 inhabitants, of whom 40% were European immigrants, who brought new ideas from Europe and began to turn Rosario into a politically progressive city (contrasting with the more conservative, aristocratic Santa Fe).


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: During the second half of the 19th century, there was a movement promoting that the city of Rosario become the capital of the republic. Ovidio Lagos, founder of the oldest Argentine newspaper, "La Capital", was one of the strongest proponents of this idea (one of the main avenues in Rosario now carries his name). Rosario was indeed declared the federal capital on three occasions, but each time the law was vetoed by the Executive Branch (once by Bartolomé Mitre and twice by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento). In 1911, the French-owned railway company Ferrocarril Rosario y Puerto Belgrano opened a line between Rosario and Puerto Belgrano, Argentina's main naval base. By 1926, Rosario had 407,000 inhabitants, 47% of them foreign, many coming from Europe in the wake of World War I.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: In 1969, workers and students took to the streets and organized strikes in what has been dubbed the "Rosariazo" against the dictatorship. A few years later, in 1976, the military dictatorship made hundreds of dissident citizens "disappear" in what is known as the Dirty War.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: In 1983, Argentina returned to democratic rule, but in 1989, hyperinflation caused the economic collapse of the country. In Rosario there were riots and looting episodes. Under the Menem administration, the situation worsened as the industrial sector of the city was dismantled by foreign competition, and agricultural exports stagnated. In 1995, unemployment in the area reached 21.1% and a large part of Rosario's population fell below the poverty line.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Since the recovery of the national economy that followed the 2001 collapse, Rosario's economic situation has improved. The boom in agricultural exports has caused a large increase in consumer spending and investment. The Socialist Party has won mayoral races in the city in every election since Councilman Héctor Cavallero's 1989 election. Cavallero's successor, Hermes Binner (elected in 1995), was elected Governor of Santa Fe in 2007 and became the runner-up in the 2011 presidential election on the FAP ticket. Mayor Miguel Lifschitz's administration, elected in 2007, took advantage of the economic boom to invest heavily in public works as well as in public health (which takes up about a quarter of the whole budget). Mayor Mónica Fein became, in 2011, the first Socialist woman elected mayor in Argentine history.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: After the 1990s, Rosario became a major city of the illegal drug trade in Argentina, headed by a drug gang called "Los Monos" ("The Monkeys"). Early during 2018, it was estimated by national news sources that a turf war between local drug gangs ("Los Funes" and "Los Camino") was costing an average of one life every twenty five hours.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario is ruled by an executive branch represented by a mayor (seat: Palacio de los Leones), and a legislative branch, consisting of a Deliberative Council (seat: Palacio Vassallo). The mayor is elected for a four-year term, and the Council renews half of its 21 members every two years.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Since 1997, a municipal program of decentralization of legislative activities was carried out, materialized in 6 Municipal Centres of District (Centre, North, South, West, Northwest and Southwest).


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The city is divided into six large administrative districts (Center, North, Northwest, West, Southwest, and South), with Municipal District Centers that provide services to the population.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: For years, local people and institutions have been pushing the provincial government to grant Rosario the status of Autonomous City. Some, with the sponsorship of the governors of Santa Fe, Entre Ríos and Córdoba as well as other important politicians, have put forward a legislative project to move the National Congress to Rosario, to decentralize the national government.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Since the return to democracy in 1983, the mayors of Rosario were Horacio Usandizaga, Héctor Cavallero (standing in for Usandizaga, then re-elected), Hermes Binner (re-elected once), Miguel Lifschitz (re-elected once), and, since December 2011 to December 2019, Mónica Fein. Currently, the mayor is Pablo Javkin, whose term lasts from December 2019 to 2023. From Cavallero on (1989), the mayor has been a member of the Socialist Party, since December 2019, Rosario's mayor is from a different political party, ending more than 30 years of socialism.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The city does not have a police force of its own (it is served by the provincial police), but in 2004 it pioneered the creation of a special patrol force of unarmed officers called "Guardia Urbana Municipal" ("Municipal Urban Guard"), which was later used as a model for Buenos Aires and other cities.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The municipality of Rosario comprises , of which are urbanized, in 6,306 housing blocks. Of this area, , 5.3% is devoted to green spaces (parks, boulevards, plazas), which gives over 10 m of green space per inhabitant.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Electric power is supplied to the whole urban area and running water reaches 97% of the population (about 350,000 homes). Natural gas is provided to 227,152 homes.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: With the recovery of the national economy since 2002, the city experienced a real-estate boom. In the period 2003–2006, the construction sector added 2 million m, investing about $900 million. Despite this increased supply, both price and rent have increased sharply compared to the values during the 1990s.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: According to experts, this growth was propelled by the increased purchasing power of farmers around Rosario, helped by competitive exports, and the overall preference for safer investment options.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario has several public health centers: five municipal hospitals (including a children's hospital and an emergency hospital/trauma center) and a municipal outpatient-only center, plus two large provincial hospitals (Hospital Provincial and Hospital Centenario), and their associated primary care centers in the city proper and its metropolitan area.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario is the centre of a metropolitan region whose economy is based on services and industry, generating the second-largest urban gross regional product of Argentina, after Greater Buenos Aires. The principal manufacturing sector is the agro industry, whose industries are placed in the northern and southern areas of Greater Rosario; the investments over the last decade have transformed Rosario into a major role of processing oil of the world Many other sectors contribute to the diversified industrial offerings of the city. Rosario and its metropolitan area produce 20% of the cars, 4% of the domestic refrigerators, 80% of the machinery for the food industry and 100% of the auto bodies for long-distance buses made in Argentina.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Other important sectors include the petrochemical sector, with three plants located in the suburbs of San Lorenzo and Port San Martin; the chemistry sector, with plants for sulphuric acid, fertilizers, resins and other products; the cellulose industry; the meat industry; ironworks; auto parts; the plants and equipment for bottled oil; agricultural machinery; and the materials and equipment for the construction industry.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Worldwide international companies settled in Rosario include, among others, General Motors, Cargill, Unilever, John Deere, Petrobrás, ICI, Dow, Tenneco and Mahle.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The main financial bank at the city of Rosario is the Municipal Bank of Rosario. Its central offices are located in the financial district, on San Martín St., and there are several additional offices throughout the city. It is focused on small and medium enterprises and other organizations, especially through micro credits, and may be considered an "ethical bank."


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The Municipal Bank was founded in 1896 to support the financial needs of the citizens and small businesses in the highly productive region of southern Santa Fe Province, centered in Rosario. At the time, the city had around 92,000 inhabitants and was already the most important port on the Paraná River. The idea of creating a municipal financial institution was expressed in 1893 by Mayor Floduardo Grandoli, citing the proliferation of "centers of usury" that exploited those in need of credit, especially the poor (something not addressed by the profile of the Provincial Bank of Santa Fe, which granted loans only to demonstrably solvent persons). Acting on this, the municipal Counseling Commission passed a bill (on 1 February 1895) dictating an "Organic Charter of the Municipal Bank of Loans and Savings Accounts;" the bank opened exactly one year later.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The seat of the bank was moved in 1905. Its name was changed to its present form on 14 May 1940 by a municipal bill. Its location was moved again, for the last time so far, in 1986. Following some political controversy, the bank in 2006 was capitalized by the municipality to comply with new regulations dictated by the Central Bank, and transformed into a joint stock company, with only 1% of the stock belonging to the municipal state. A special clause was added, dictating that this minimum share is unchangeable, to prevent hypothetical attempts at privatization.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The Rosario Board of Trade hosts the country's largest commodity market, dealing in cereals and oilseeds, and also the largest futures exchange (ROFEX). The banking sector includes the state-owned Municipal Bank of Rosario, with branches and offices throughout the city, and the central branch of the New Bank of Santa Fe.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The largest technological center in Argentina – Polo Tecnológico Rosario (PTR) – is located in Rosario within La Siberia site. The center focuses mainly on research and development of the three following areas: biotechnology, software development, and telecommunications. It currently employs 3,500 people, and it is expected to grow 100% by 2015 to become one of the largest in Latin America.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario has many cultural activities in many artistic disciplines with national and international reach. The city has produced important personalities in the fields of music, painting, philosophy, politics, poetry, literature, medicine, and law. Among the city's important theaters are El Círculo, Sala Lavardén, Broadway, Astengo Auditorium, and La Comedia. A cultural complex known as Puerto de la Música, designed by the modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer (of Brasilia fame), is to be built along the banks of the Paraná River. If completed, it will be one of the largest centers for musical performance in Latin America. In 2012, after years without progress, it was put on indefinite hold due to financial constraints. January 1995 saw the launch of the Rosario District Fishing Championship, held in the Parana River. Three years later, in 1998, a 10-year-old Lionel Messi was crowned Junior Champion.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The city has several museums, including Juan B. Castagnino Fine Arts Museum, Firma y Odilo Estévez Municipal Decorative Art Museum, Dr. Julio Marc Provincial Historical Museum, City Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Art of Rosario (MACRo). The Dr. Ángel Gallardo Provincial Natural Sciences Museum was rebuilt after a fire in 2003 and re-opened at a new location in 2006. Rosario also has a public astronomy complex, located in Urquiza Park, which consists of an observatory (inaugurated in 1970) and a planetarium (1984).


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The Fundación Italia is a cultural institution created in 1985 as a "cultural bond with Italy". It has organized a Neapolitan music concert, performances of "Madame Butterfly" and numerous talks about the present and future of Argentina. Among the people invited to give these talks were economists Domingo Cavallo and Alfonso Prat Gay, renowned scholars Beatriz Sarlo and Silvia Bleichmar, journalists Alejandro Rozitchner and Jorge Asís, filmmaker Fernando Solanas and former presidents of Chile (Ricardo Lagos), Argentina (Eduardo Duhalde), and Uruguay (Luis Alberto Lacalle Herrera).


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The Hippodrome was located in the heart of the Parque de la Independencia and occupied a prominent place in the city's social scene. In 1919, construction began of the Popular Opinion. La Tribuna rose Partners in 1928. Moreover, it had started the construction of a new box office. In 1941, the Tribune Paddock (formerly Partners Tribune) was demolished. The final podium of professional construidaes, begun in 1972. Independence Hippodrome was the initiator in Argentina night time racing, with lighting facilities for this purpose. There's also the Jockey Club de Rosario.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The Main Track has of sand. This track is open on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for tests, with Sunday competitions.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The Assistant Track 1 has with sand, used on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays inclusive for the tournaments and some special courses such as race trot.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The National Flag Memorial in Rosario is a monumental complex built near the banks of the Paraná River. It was commissioned in 1944 and inaugurated on June 20, 1957 – the anniversary of the death of Manuel Belgrano, creator of the Argentine flag, who raised it for the first time on an island in the river on February 27, 1812.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The complex has a total area of about and was constructed using stone primarily sourced in the Andes. The structure was designed by the architects Ángel Guido and Alejandro Bustillo, and the monument was adorned with works by sculptors Lola Mora, Eduardo Barnes, Alfredo Bigatti, and José Fioravanti.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The Memorial (Monumento) has three parts: the Tower (Torre) or mast, high, which commemorates the Revolution of May 1810 and houses Manuel Belgrano's crypt in its base; the Civic Courtyard (Patio Cívico), which symbolizes the effort of the organization of the state (the Courtyard is used for massive open-air shows), and the Triumphal Propylaeum (Propileo Triunfal), representing the nation as organized after the 1853 Constitution. Under the Propylaeum there is the Honor Room for the Flags of America (where the flags of all American nations are displayed).


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The complex faces Belgrano Avenue, and is delimited by Córdoba and Santa Fe Streets, the latter of which slopes down towards the river at this point. The Propylaeum can be accessed from the pedestrian passage called Pasaje Juramento ("Oath Passage"), which starts at Buenos Aires St. between the municipal building (Palacio de los Leones) and the Cathedral, in front of Plaza 25 de Mayo (May 25 Square). Statues flank the passage by famous sculptor Lola Mora.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The Memorial and the National Flag Park located in front of it are the seat of the main celebrations of Flag Day on June 20. The 50th anniversary of the inauguration of the complex, in 2007, was marked by a special celebration and by the unveiling of a new lighting system.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Architect Oscar Niemeyer came up with the concept by expanding the show from inside the theater to a much larger outside audience. The concrete curvilinear shape building with an area of is the first design of Oscar Niemeyer in Argentina. The project will be a distinctive part of Rosario's skyline. Construction will begin at the end of 2010 and is expected to be completed by 2014.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Located in Urquiza Park, Rosario's Municipal Astronomical Complex is one of the principal astronomical centers of the region.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The planetarium has a core team, together with its secondary elements, providing an artificial image of the sky through projections made on a fixed hemispherical dome that functions as a display.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The assembly is installed in the Room "Oscar Claudio Caprile", located in the heart of the magnificent building that is shaped like a comet.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: For its technical characteristics in terms of size, quality of sound and image, and interior comfort, this room is considered among the best in the world.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The building in the shape of a comet forms a part of the complex that includes the "Prof. Victor Capolongo" observatory and the experimental science museum.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Municipal Astronomical Observatory "Prof. Victor Capolongo" was inaugurated on June 18, 1970, and named its first director.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The Observatory facilitates outreach, teaching, and research in the field of astronomy and related sciences and informs the public of phenomena that occur in the sky, such as eclipses, planetary configurations, passages of comets, etc.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: To that end, the Observatory has installed two telescopes. One Coudé refractor has a aperture and focal distance provided with Lyot's monochromatic filter for solar observation. Another Cassegrain reflector has aperture, constructed by the Carl Zeiss company.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: There are realized observations and astronomical photography of all the visible celestial objects in Rosario's sky, according to time of year and especially the Sun, the Moon, and the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and Venus.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: This museum was inaugurated on September 24, 1987. It is the first in Argentina and differs from traditional museums, in that it has equipment and instruments to demonstrate the laws of nature, which can be interactively used by the general public.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Thus, visitors of all ages can use telescopes and microscopes or experiment with lasers, sound mixers, radios of various types, computers, solar cells, etc.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: To complement this, exhibit panels have photographs and explanatory texts of science and technology: mathematics and computer science, engineering, physics, astronomy, astronautics, geology, chemistry, and biology. In addition, an important area is intended for periodic samples, such as the Space Age, energy: renewable and rational use, from sand to glass, among others. The museum staff is supported by contributions from the Ministry of Science and Technology Office, the Municipality of Rosario, and the contributions made by institutions and individuals.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The museum audiovisual projections are made in the Video Sector Science, which has an area called "CIENCIANIÑO" (ChildScience) for children aged 4 to 10. The museum works in the evening, similar to the Planetarium. Educational institutions at all levels are treated in shift assignments.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The 4-metre-tall bronze statue of Che Guevara was unveiled on 14 June 2008 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of his birth. It is made from 75,000 bronze keys donated by Argentines nationwide and weighs 2.7 tons. The statue was made by artist Andrés Zerneri and is the first such monument to Guevara in his native Argentina.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario is located in the Province of Santa Fe, Argentina. This metropolis has a population of about 1.2 million (1,159,004 est.), thus being Argentina's third most populated urban settlement, after Córdoba. Greater Rosario comprises Rosario itself (population about 910,000) and a large area around it, spreading in all directions except eastward (because of the Paraná River). Directly to the south, it includes the city of Villa Gobernador Gálvez, with a population of about 75,000, about from Rosario city center.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: To the west and south-west there are several smaller towns and cities (Funes, Roldán, Pérez, Soldini); Roldán is from the Rosario city centre. These settlements were incorporated into the metropolis due to their vicinity to major roads leading into Rosario, and many people living there habitually commute to Rosario.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The farthest end is to the north, following the coast of the river; from Rosario, one finds, in succession and usually merging into each other, the towns of Granadero Baigorria, Capitán Bermúdez, Fray Luis Beltrán, San Lorenzo (already in a different "departamento", with a population of over 40,000), and Puerto General San Martín, the last being at a distance of from Rosario.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The north of the Greater Rosario is one end of an area traditionally called "Cordón Industrial" ("Industrial Corridor"), since it was traditionally a heavily industrialized productive region. The prelude to the economic crisis in the 1990s largely dismantled the industrial infrastructure and damaged agricultural exports. These sectors were largely revitalized by 2006 as the national economy continued to recover, but high levels of poverty and unemployment persist in the city's western neighborhoods (official surveys indicated that in 2011, 6.5% of the metro area population was under the poverty line; and that in 2012, 8.3% of the labor force was unemployed).


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: In 1876 the total population was 203,509; by 1926, Rosario had 407,000 inhabitants, 47% of them foreign, many having arrived from Europe in the wake of World War I. Most of these were Italian, and among them, a majority from the north-western region of Liguria.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: As of the 2010 Census, there were 1,193,605 people residing in the city and 31 surrounding districts, making Greater Rosario the third-largest metro area in Argentina even as its population growth has leveled off. The population density in Rosario proper was 6,680 inhabitants per square kilometer (17,300 per mi); but, only about 2,400 per km (6,100 per mi) in the suburbs.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The 2010 Census also showed a relatively aged population. With 21% under the age of fifteen and 17% over sixty, the people have an age structure similar to those in many North American cities. They are, likewise, more elderly on average than Argentines as a whole (of whom 25% were under 15 and 14%, over 60).


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The ethnic make-up of Rosario changed in the late 19th century, when significant numbers of European immigrants arrived in the city. Prior to this the city's population had been almost completely European-descent in ethnic origin. As Buenos Aires was the first landfall in Argentina for many migrant ships coming from Europe in the 1850s and 1890s, Rosario started to experience a diverse influx of people. The main contributors were Spain, Italy, France, Croatia, Poland, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, the Balkans (especially Greece, Serbia and Montenegro), Switzerland, Germany, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Scandinavia (especially Sweden). By the 1910s, 43 percent of the city population was non-native Argentine after immigration rates peaked.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Most immigrants, regardless of origin, settled in the city or around Greater Rosario. However, in the first stages of immigration, some formed colonies (especially agricultural colonies) in different parts of the city, often encouraged by the Argentine government and/or sponsored by private individuals and organizations.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Christianity is the dominant faith with Roman Catholicism as the most practiced, followed by Protestantism. Judaism is the second-most professed religion in the city as Rosario has one of the largest Jewish communities in Argentina. There is also a local Islamic society.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario is divided into six districts, most named by location, although the easternmost is called "Centre District" for it includes the oldest part of the city, historically called "Centro" (City Centre). The data given below are from the .


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: At Rosario city center, Córdoba Street is the main avenue. It begins at the Flag Memorial Park, climbs towards the district area, and becomes a pedestrian walk for seven blocks, between Plaza 25 de Mayo and Plaza Pringles. Along Córdoba Ave to the west "Paseo del Siglo" ("Walk of the Century") was settled, with former houses of wealthy families, finally there is also the "San Martín Square", and elsewhere, "Plaza Montenegro" (on "Peatonal San Martín", the pedestrian-only four blocks of San Martín Street) and "Plaza Sarmiento".


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Oroño Boulevard (going north–south) and Pellegrini Avenue (east-west) mark the boundaries of the town center together with the river. At their confluence starts the Parque de la Independencia, that houses the Juan B. Castagnino Fine Arts Museum, the Newell's Old Boys football club, and the sports clubs "Provincial" and "Gimnasia y Esgrima", as well as the horse racetrack and the former "Sociedad Rural" (Rural Society).


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Towards the south, beyond Pellegrini Avenue, there are two more boulevards, 27 de Febrero and Seguí, and avenues Uriburu, Arijón and Battle y Ordóñez.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: To the west, after Oroño, there are the avenues Ovidio Lagos and Francia, Avellaneda Boulevard and Provincias Unidas Avenue. The main "barrios" in the south are La Tablada, Parque Casado, Las Heras, Las Delicias and Las Flores. The city ends in the Saladillo Stream.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Among the districts in the west are Echesortu, Belgrano, Triángulo, Moderno, Godoy and Fisherton. To the north-east there lie Pichincha, Ludueña, Lisandro de la Torre (home of Rosario Central's stadium) and Empalme Graneros.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Next to the stadium, there is the Parque Alem, and nearby the Sorrento thermal power plant. To the north lie the districts of Alberdi, La Florida (with a popular beach resort of the same name), Parque Field (built under US President John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress development plans) and Rucci. The main streets are Alberdi Avenue and its continuation, Rondeau Boulevard (which leads to the Rosario-Victoria Bridge and the city of Granadero Baigorria). These are crossed by the avenues Las Tres Vías, Génova, Sorrento, and Puccio.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: An important part of Rosario's urban character is its riverbank. The city recovered the riverbank of the Paraná not long ago, thanks to a reorganization of terrains formerly owned by the port and the national railroad system. Going from the center immediately north of the port, the riverbank is surrounded by a large number of parks; Argentine flag Memorial, Parque de España, Parque de las Colectividades and Parque Sunchales.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Through the years, Rosario has spread in all directions. Towards the south, beyond Pellegrini, there are two more boulevards, 27 de Febrero and Seguí, and avenues Uriburu, Arijón and Battle y Ordóñez.To the west, after Oroño, there are the avenues Ovidio Lagos and Francia, Avellaneda Boulevard and Provincias Unidas Avenue. The main neighborhoods in the south are La Tablada, Parque Casado, Las Heras, Las Delicias and Las Flores. The city ends in the Saladillo Stream (the natural border with Villa Gobernador Gálvez). This is just south of the great barrio Grandoli.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Among the neighborhoods in the west are Echesortu, Belgrano, Triángulo, Moderno, Godoy, and Fisherton (near the west end of the city, formerly the home of hierarchical personnel of English railroad companies established in Rosario).


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: To the north-east there lie the neighborhoods of Pichincha (a red-light district in the early 20th century, now home to an open-air antiquities fair: "Mercado de antigüedades "Feria Retro La Huella""), Ludueña, Lisandro de la Torre (home of the Rosario Central football club) and Empalme Graneros; these last three are in the influence area of the Ludueña Stream, now contained by underground piping, but until the 1980s a source of floods.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Next to the Rosario Central stadium, there is a large park, Parque Alem, and not far from it, there stands the Sorrento thermoelectric power plant. North of the Lisandro de la Torre neighborhood, there are Alberdi (formerly an independent town), La Florida (with a popular beach resort of the same name), and Rucci.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The main streets in the north are Alberdi Avenue and its continuation, Rondeau Boulevard (which leads to the north exit of the city, the access to the Rosario-Victoria Bridge, and the town of Granadero Baigorria). These major arteries are crossed by several avenues: Las Tres Vías, Génova, Sorrento, and Puccio.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario's strategic location is destined to become a significant transportation hub and as the bi-oceanic corridor that links the State of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), an important component in global distribution and the core center of a key corridor in the Mercosur, the Common Market for the South.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Rosario, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 50 min. 9% of public transit riders, ride for more than 2 hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 14 min, while 19% of riders wait for over 20 minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 4.3 km, while 4% travel for over 12 km in a single direction.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The Rosario trolleybus system consists of only one main trunk line. It is presently operated by a government-owned corporation, SEMTUR (Sociedad del Estado Municipal para el Transporte Urbano de Rosario, "Municipal State Society for Rosario Urban Transport"), as are some of Rosario's other urban bus lines.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Plaza Sarmiento is the hub of the city bus system, about 40 urban lines in the metropolitan area that provide service every 5 to 10 minutes.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Bus fares are pre-paid by means of either a rechargeable plastic card or a disposable paper card with a magnetic stripe which can be bought from post offices, automatic vending machines, and private businesses. For occasional use, a larger fare can be paid using a coin machine in the bus unit. The interurban lines have differential fares, and some allow payment in cash only. The municipal administration is phasing out the paper cards, in favor of the plastic ones, during the second half of 2012.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The urban bus fleet was partially renewed during the recovery of the national economy, since 2003, and consists of about 730 units. In 2005 the average age of the buses was five years and 11 months. Improvements in the economy have led to increased use of public transport and comparatively less use of bicycles. According to the Rosario Transportation Office, in 2005 there were about 11 million bus journeys per month, by 2007, usage has climbed to 420,000 people every day (12.6 million per month).


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: A significant number of buses run on natural gas, as it also happens in Argentina as a whole since the price of this fuel is quite low compared to the alternatives. The idea to transform all buses to this system did not prosper; most buses run on heavily subsidized diesel fuel.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: In 2012 bus lanes were added to several pairs of parallel streets traversing the downtown area. Bus stops along these are spaced every three blocks instead of the usual two. For the most part, they leave room to only one additional, narrow lane on the left for cars and other vehicles. They can be used for taxis carrying passengers as well. They are exclusive for public transport during weekdays and on Saturday morning; stopping or parking on the affected streets is forbidden, as well as right turns. Their implementation attracted opposition from residents and shop owners but was well received by habitual bus users since they reduce the time needed to get out of the crowded central area by a noticeable amount.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario has a medium-sized taxi fleet, with units painted black and outlined in yellow. Some belong to radio-taxi companies and can be reserved by telephone; others only in the streets. As the economy of Argentina recovers, the capacity of the taxi fleet has been strained by higher usage. In September 2005, the Deliberative Council approved the compulsory installation of radio-call systems in all taxi units, but this requirement has not been fulfilled.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario is also a major hub for long-distance overland transportation from the Mariano Moreno Bus Terminal, ("Terminal de Omnibus"), across from the Patio de la Madera Convention and Exposition Centre complex, about 15 blocks west of Plaza San Martin.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The transportation facility serves 73 bus companies in short, medium, and long-distance travel, carrying 1,100.000 passengers per month to 784 national and international destinations, which comprise most major domestic cities including Puerto Iguazú, Salta and Bariloche and international destinations such as Asunción, Paraguay, Curitiba and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Montevideo, Uruguay, destinations may be long but white-clad chauffeurs handle comfortable long-distance coaches with modern conveniences.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario was one of the main cities chosen by the British and French railway companies that built and operated some of the railways in Argentina during the 19th and early 20th centuries, with more than 15 stations operating in the city. When the entire Argentine railway network was nationalised during the Presidency of Juan Perón, most of the stations (by then under the administration of State-owned company Ferrocarriles Argentinos) were closed for passenger services to reduce costs, leaving only a few active.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: After the railway privatization in the early 1990s during Carlos Menem's presidency, the passenger services were considerably reduced. The lines operated by Nuevo Central Argentino (NCA) handle most of the cargo. Additionally, two private companies provided limited passenger services to several major cities. Trenes de Buenos Aires (TBA) ran weekly trains south to Retiro in Buenos Aires and north to Santa Fe. The company Ferrocentral also operated weekly trains south to Buenos Aires and northwest to Córdoba and Tucumán.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Nowadays, passenger services to Rosario are being operated by state-owned company Trenes Argentinos, running trains to Rosario Norte with stop in Rosario Sur.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The other station in the main district, Rosario Oeste, used to concentrate all the passenger services when railways were nationalised in 1948, but currently operates for freight trains only.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: As of June 2021, only two stations remain active for passenger services in the city. The following chart describes the total of existing railway stations in Rosario:


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: There was a project to build a high-speed train between Buenos Aires-Rosario-Córdoba, scheduled to be started in 2008, with an inauguration in 2012, that would join Rosario and Buenos Aires in 85 minutes, and would reach Córdoba in another 90 minutes at speeds of up to . However it never was constructed and the project was finally suspended after the controversy it generated among the citizens and the media critics because of the high costs it implicated.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The city once had a large tramway network with 192 km of track in the centre of the city, however this was abandoned in 1963 after fierce competition from bus transport in the city. The city now has two heritage tramways, one of which uses vintage trams converted to run on rubber tyres, while the other uses the original trams from the city refurbished to run on rails.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: More recently, a metro system was proposed for the city, though this was shelved in favour of a new urban tramway network. The network is currently in the bidding process, with large firms like Siemens and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China bidding for its construction. It is expected to begin at the recently inaugurated Rosario Sur Station and run northwards through the city.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario is linked to the rest of the country by a number of roads: the Aramburu Highway (southeast, to Buenos Aires), National Route 9 (from Buenos Aires to Rosario and then north and west up to Jujuy and Bolivia), the Brigadier Estanislao López Highway (north, to Santa Fe City), National Route 11 (to the north of Santa Fe, Formosa and Paraguay), National Route 33 (to the southwest of Santa Fe and the province of Buenos Aires, and then through National Route 7 to San Luis, Mendoza and Chile), National Route 34 (north to Santiago del Estero, Tucumán and Bolivia), and National Route 174 (east, to Entre Ríos, over the Rosario-Victoria Bridge).


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: It is surrounded with an extensive system of two belt-highways called Circunvalación Motorway and A012 which in turn set the limits of the city.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The beltway is and was built for traffic to avoid the congested city centre, allowing drivers to bypass the city going around it in a much shorter time.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: In its length, it intersects with National Route 9, National Route 3, National Route 34, National Route 11 and National Route 174.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The official numbering system denotes this road as "A008" but this denomination is mostly unknown by the locals as it is still called ""Avenida de Circunvalación 25 de Mayo"" (""25 of May Beltway Avenue"") commemorating the May Revolution of 1810. Some sections are named after different personalities by local decree. For example:


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The A012 is the second beltway at the southeast of the city. It has a semi-circular length centered around the city, running as a long-length beltway. From the National Route 9 junction on km marker 278, in the town of Esther, to the junction with National Route 11 on km marker 326 in the city of San Lorenzo it runs for .


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: This road is popularly known as the "Second Rosario Beltway", as it borders the metropolitan area of greater Rosario.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Through National Decree 1595 of 1979 this road switched to federal control. Beforehand this road was called Provincial Route 16.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The Rosario – Islas Malvinas International Airport is located west-northwest from the center of Rosario, a city in the Santa Fe Province of Argentina. The city of Funes lies directly to the west of the airport, and part of the city limit shares a border with the property of the airport grounds. The airport covers an area of 550 hectares (1359 acres) and is operated by the Province of Santa Fe.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The airport serves the Greater Rosario area and is the main hub for Sol Líneas Aéreas and is also served by Aerolíneas Argentinas, Pluna and Gol Transportes Aéreos. There are domestic flights within Argentina from Rosario to Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Mar del Plata (via Buenos Aires), Mendoza (vía Córdoba), Santa Fe and Villa Gesell (via Buenos Aires) cities as well as international services to, Porto Alegre, Brazil, and Punta del Este, Uruguay (direct flight in summer and via Buenos Aires in fall, winter and spring).


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The Port of Rosario is an inland port and a major goods-shipping centre of Argentina, located in the city of Rosario, province of Santa Fe, on the left-hand (western) shore of the Paraná River, about upstream from the Atlantic Ocean.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: At this point of the course of the Paraná River (Kilometer 420, Mile 260), there is the depth transition between overseas and river navigation. The main channel of the river directly in front of the port has an advantageous configuration that allows preservation of a depth of with minor periodic dredging. This allows for downstream navigation of vessels up to Panamax standards. The Paraná is about wide at Kilometer 418. It becomes wide downstream.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The port is the largest of a series located in the several cities of the Greater Rosario that lie on the Paraná; the last (northernmost) able of overseas traffic being Puerto General San Martín (. It is part of the Bi-Oceanic Corridor, which joins the Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean via Buenos Aires, Rosario, Córdoba, and the Cuyo region ; going north–south it forms the axis of the Paraguay-Paraná Hydroway. It directly services the area of Santa Fe that produces a large portion of Argentine exports, and indirectly the whole Mercosur trade bloc. In 2003 the traffic in the port amounted to .


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Cargo from other parts of Argentina is brought into the port by the railway lines of the Nuevo Central Argentino, communicating with Córdoba (west) and Zárate, Buenos Aires (south), as well as the multiple national and provincial roads and highways that converge in Rosario. Communication with the north-eastern part of the country was enhanced by the 2003 opening of the Rosario-Victoria Bridge, that joins the city with the province of Entre Ríos. The Rosario International Airport (located west) has also been refurbished to work with cargo traffic.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario is an important educational centre at a national and international level. It is the home of the National University of Rosario (UNR) since 1968, which includes the Law Faculty, the Medicine Faculty, the Humanities Faculty and an advanced study centre called "Ciudad Universitaria de Rosario" (university city of Rosario) that is home to more than 10 colleges, among them the Faculty of Psychology, the Faculty of Political Sciences, and the Faculty of Architecture. It is also home of the Rosario Regional Faculty, a branch of the National Technological University (UTN). All of these national colleges are free.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: In the city there are approximately 624 establishments destined for elementary levels and secondary education, the Technical Institute, which depends directly on the UNR. With a solid tradition as for university education, it is head of several academic institutions, and is public, and free access.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Currently, there are some 80,000 university students at various institutions around the city, representing approximately 8.5% of the total population. This rate is one of the highest in Argentina. In Rosario, nearly 15% of the population benefits from higher education degrees, or have undergone at least some university studies.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario has private colleges, as the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina (UCA), the Austral University, the University of the Latin American Educational Center (UCEL), the Interamerican Open University (UAI), the Italian University of Rosario (IUNIR), the San Martin University and the University of Concepcion del Uruguay which are private institutions.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario is the third largest urban center where Rioplatense Spanish is spoken, after Buenos Aires and Montevideo. The local language evidences the typical linguistic features that characterize this dialect, notably the voseo (use of "vos" instead of "tú" as pronoun for the second person singular) and the "sheísmo" (form of yeísmo where "ll-" and "y-" are pronounced as a voiceless ). Although the "español rosarino" does not differ substantially from the other variants of the same dialect, it presents particularities easily noticeable by those who live in the other main populated areas of the region.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: One of the most notable characteristics of the language of Rosario's area of influence is the process of aspiration and disappearance of the "-s". When the "-s" is in implosive position, end of syllable or word followed by consonant, its sound becomes a soft and voiceless aspiration [h] (the word "obispo" is pronounced o̞ˈβihpo̞). In the popular and vulgar language, the final "-s", "-r", or "-d" are sometimes suppressed, although this phenomenon is commonly associated to sociocultural groups of lower formal education.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Just as in Buenos Aires, the "voseo" is pronominal and verbal. The pronoun "tú" and its associated verbal forms are inexistent (which is not the case of the Montevideo variant) The tendency to add a final "-s" to the verbal forms of the second person plural ("vos fuistes", "vos vinistes"), which is rather common in Buenos Aires, is very unusual among Rosario natives. The intonation in Rosario is generally more neutral and monotonous than that of Buenos Aires.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Even though the lexicon of Rosario and Buenos Aires is effectively identical, there are numerous terms and idioms that Rosario shares with the rest of the country (even areas where a different dialect prevails) but not with the capital, as well as other words and expressions that are unique to the "rosarino" speech, both formal and informal.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The "Rosarigasino" is a type of Jerigonza (game of words) that originated in the city and was rather common in the informal speech during the 20th century. Although it has fallen into disuse, it has become a language of cult among certain local groups.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario is the home of the football clubs Rosario Central (founded 1889) and Newell's Old Boys (founded 1903). Both play in Primera División Argentina. Central has won four National championships (in 1971, 1973, 1980 and in 1987), six National cups (1913, 1915, two cups in 1916, 1920 and 2018), and one international title: the Conmebol Cup (in 1995, precursor of the current Copa Sudamericana).


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Newell's has 6 National championships (in 1974, 1988, 1991, 1992, 2004 and in 2013) and 3 National cups (in 1911, 1921 and in 1949). Rosario's other football clubs are Club Atlético Central Córdoba, currently playing in Primera C, Club Atlético Tiro Federal Argentino in Torneo Argentino A and Argentino de Rosario in Primera D.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: It is also the hometown of Argentine internationals Lionel Messi, Ángel Di María, Maximiliano Rodríguez, César Delgado, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Mauro Icardi, Giovani Lo Celso, Leandro Fernández, Ezequiel Garay, Luciana Aymar, Juan Imhoff, Nicolás Vergallo and Leonardo Senatore.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The city received international attention as the host of the II South American Games in 1982, as one of the host cities of the 1978 FIFA World Cup, the 1982 FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship, the 1993 FIVB Volleyball Men's U21 World Championship, the 2001 FIFA World Youth Championship and the 1990 Basketball World Cup. Rosario also bid for the 2019 Pan American Games but the Argentine Olympic Committee (COA) voted to support La Punta instead.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario is the second choice site for Argentine rugby tests, after Buenos Aires. Famous rugby clubs from the city include Club Atlético del Rosario – one of the four UAR founding clubs – and also Jockey Club de Rosario and Duendes Rugby Club, both former winners of the Nacional de Clubes title. The city hosted the 2010 IRB Junior World Championship.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The 2010 Women's Hockey World Cup, 2004 and 2012 Champions Trophy and the 2014–15 Women's FIH Hockey World League Final were played there.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: In 2014 the city hosted the Inline speed skating World Championship at Parque de la Independencia and in 2015 it hosted the men's, women's and juniors' FIRS Inline Hockey World Championships at Club Atlético Provincial's indoor arena.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario hosted the 2017 World Archery Youth Championships, and will host the 2018 FIBA Under-17 Basketball World Cup, and the 2019 South American Beach Games.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The city was the starting point for the 2014 Dakar Rally, as well as the finishing point in 2016. It also hosted the 2015 World RX of Argentina.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The city is located on a smoothly undulated plain typical of the Pampas, between 22.5 and 24.6 metres above mean sea level; the original settlement rests on the ravine on the right-hand shore of the Paraná, opposite a group of islands of the Paraná Delta which are partly in the jurisdiction of the province of Entre Ríos. The nearest city across the river's flood plain (60 km) is Victoria, Entre Ríos, linked to Rosario by the Rosario-Victoria Bridge.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario lies on the ravine of the right-hand shore of the Paraná, about above mean sea level, in a place with a natural slope to the low shore. The point of origin of the city is "Plaza 25 de Mayo" ("May 25 Square"), now surrounded by the municipality ("Palacio de los Leones"), the Basilica Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary, the Central Post Office, the Decorative Art Museum and a building called "La Bola de Nieve" ("The Snowball"). Between the Cathedral and the municipal building is "Pasaje Juramento" ("Oath Passage"), leading to the Flag Memorial. The streets mostly follow a regular checkerboard pattern.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The Rosario area has a "Pampean", humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification: Cfa/Cwa), and is well known for its changeable weather conditions. The city has average temperatures of maximum and minimum. The annual rainfall is .


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario is usually warmer than other mainland Argentine capital cities in the winter. The lowest average in winter is . This is due in part to the city's flat topography, its situation on the Paraná River bank, and the presence of high density of urbanization. Those conditions have created a microclimate known as urban heat island that often means that the city is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The temperature difference usually is larger at night than during the day and larger in winter than in summer, and is most apparent when winds are weak. However, snowfalls are extremely rare: the most recent occurrence of sleet in the CBD was on 9 July 2007.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: During the spring, Rosario commonly enjoys extended periods of warm weather and clear skies. On average, Rosario has average day-night temperatures of . The city experiences hot and humid summer days, with maximum temperatures above , when northerly winds blow humid air from Brazil. The record high temperature is on January 9, 2006, while the record low is on July 15, 2020.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario has two private local television channels, Canal 3 and Canal 5 (the latter is part of the national network Telefé), and a relay station for the public national station, Canal 7 Argentina. There are also three cable TV networks (the national ones Cablevisión and Multicanal, and a local network, Cablehogar), which support two local channels, Canal 4 Noticias and Canal 6.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: There are four AM radio stations: three private (licensed by the state) ones, LT3 Radio 2 (LT2), and LT8, and one public, Radio Nacional Rosario, property of the national state. Among the multitude (above 200) of FM stations, some notable ones are FM Vida, Estación del Siglo, FM Del Rosario, Cristal FM, Radio Hollywood, Fisherton-CNN, Continental Rosario, Radio 10 Rosario, Radiofónica, and Clásica Rosario.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: The city has three notable newspapers: "La Capital" (Argentina's oldest newspaper, founded in 1867, and still published today), "Rosario/12" (founded in 1991), and "El Ciudadano & La Región" (founded in 1999).


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Rosario is located at the center of Argentina's optical fiber ring. The main data transport companies offer all their services in the city, from public phones to mobile networks and broadband Internet access through DSL, cable modem and Wi-Fi, and including public Internet navigation centers (cybercafes).


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: About 96% of homes have a domestic telephone line, giving a total of 472,170 lines; cell phone usage has also become pervasive, as happened in Argentina as a whole since the beginning of the 21st century, reaching over 86% of the residents (866,000 mobile lines in July 2004). This demand, boosted by low prices and sale promotions, and coupled with restrictions on the installation of antennas and alleged lack of investment by the providers, sometimes degrades the quality of the service. Most notably, the mobile network collapsed almost completely in the celebrations of Christmas, New Year's Day and Friend's Day in 2004 and 2005.


title: Rosario, Santa Fe

text: Notable people from Rosario include the revolutionary Che Guevara; artist Lucio Fontana; football players Lionel Messi, Ángel Di María, Maximiliano Rodríguez, Ángel Correa, Giovanni Lo Celso, Mauro Icardi, and Hugo Gutiérrez; football coaches César Luis Menotti, Marcelo Bielsa and Gerardo Martino; field hockey player Luciana Aymar; rugby union players Juan Imhoff and Leonardo Senatore; actor/comedian Alberto Olmedo and actress Libertad Lamarque; jazz composer Gato Barbieri; cartoonist Roberto Fontanarrosa; singer-songwriter Fito Páez; painter Antonio Berni; operatic tenor José Cura; writers Angélica Gorodischer, Yamile Saied Mendez, and Patricio Pron; film director Felipe Martinez Carbonell; mathematician, Jana Rodriguez Hertz, and model Valeria Mazza.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Phobos (; systematic designation: ) is the innermost and larger of the two natural satellites of Mars, the other being Deimos. The two moons were discovered in 1877 by American astronomer Asaph Hall. It is named after Phobos, the Greek god of fear and panic, who is the son of Ares (Mars) and twin brother of Deimos.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Phobos is a small, irregularly shaped object with a mean radius of . Phobos orbits from the Martian surface, closer to its primary body than any other known planetary moon. It is so close that it orbits Mars much faster than Mars rotates, and completes an orbit in just 7 hours and 39 minutes. As a result, from the surface of Mars it appears to rise in the west, move across the sky in 4 hours and 15 minutes or less, and set in the east, twice each Martian day.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Phobos is one of the least reflective bodies in the Solar System, with an albedo of just 0.071. Surface temperatures range from about on the sunlit side to on the shadowed side. The defining surface feature is the large impact crater, Stickney, which takes up a substantial proportion of the moon's surface. The surface is also home to many grooves, with there being numerous theories as to how these grooves were formed.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Images and models indicate that Phobos may be a rubble pile held together by a thin crust that is being torn apart by tidal interactions. Phobos gets closer to Mars by about 2 cm per year, and it is predicted that within 30 to 50 million years it will either collide with the planet or break up into a planetary ring.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Phobos was discovered by astronomer Asaph Hall on 18 August 1877 at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., at about 09:14 Greenwich Mean Time. (Contemporary sources, using the pre-1925 astronomical convention that began the day at noon, give the time of discovery as 17 August at 16:06 Washington mean time, meaning 18 August 04:06 in the modern convention.) Hall had discovered Deimos, Mars's other moon, a few days earlier on 12 August 1877 at about 07:48 UTC. The names, originally spelled "Phobus" and "Deimus" respectively, were suggested by Henry Madan (1838–1901), science master at Eton College, based on Greek mythology, in which Phobos is a companion to the god, Ares.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: In the late 1950s and 1960s, the unusual orbital characteristics of Phobos led to speculations that it might be hollow.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Around 1958, Russian astrophysicist Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky, studying the secular acceleration of Phobos's orbital motion, suggested a "thin sheet metal" structure for Phobos, a suggestion which led to speculations that Phobos was of artificial origin. Shklovsky based his analysis on estimates of the upper Martian atmosphere's density, and deduced that for the weak braking effect to be able to account for the secular acceleration, Phobos had to be very light—one calculation yielded a hollow iron sphere across but less than 6 cm thick. In a February 1960 letter to the journal "Astronautics", Fred Singer, then science advisor to U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, said of Shklovsky's theory:


title: Phobos (moon)

text: If the satellite is indeed spiraling inward as deduced from astronomical observation, then there is little alternative to the hypothesis that it is hollow and therefore Martian made. The big 'if' lies in the astronomical observations; they may well be in error. Since they are based on several independent sets of measurements taken decades apart by different observers with different instruments, systematic errors may have influenced them.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Subsequently, the systematic data errors that Singer predicted were found to exist, and the claim was called into doubt, and accurate measurements of the orbit available by 1969 showed that the discrepancy did not exist. Singer's critique was justified when earlier studies were discovered to have used an overestimated value of 5 cm/yr for the rate of altitude loss, which was later revised to 1.8 cm/yr. The secular acceleration is now attributed to tidal effects, which create drag on the moon and therefore cause it spiral inward.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: The density of Phobos has now been directly measured by spacecraft to be 1.887 g/cm. Current observations are consistent with Phobos being a rubble pile. In addition, images obtained by the "Viking" probes in the 1970s clearly showed a natural object, not an artificial one. Nevertheless, mapping by the "Mars Express" probe and subsequent volume calculations do suggest the presence of voids and indicate that it is not a solid chunk of rock but a porous body. The porosity of Phobos was calculated to be 30% ± 5%, or a quarter to a third being empty.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Phobos has dimensions of , and retains too little mass to be rounded under its own gravity. Phobos does not have an atmosphere due to its low mass and low gravity. It is one of the least reflective bodies in the Solar System, with an albedo of about 0.071. Infrared spectra show that it has carbon-rich material found in carbonaceous chondrites, and its composition shows similarities to that of Mars' surface. Phobos's density is too low to be solid rock, and it is known to have significant porosity. These results led to the suggestion that Phobos might contain a substantial reservoir of ice. Spectral observations indicate that the surface regolith layer lacks hydration, but ice below the regolith is not ruled out.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Unlike Deimos, Phobos is heavily cratered, with one of the craters near the equator having a central peak despite the moon's small size. The most prominent of these is the crater Stickney, a large impact crater some in diameter, which takes up a substantial proportion of the moon's surface area. As with Mimas's crater Herschel, the impact that created Stickney must have nearly shattered Phobos.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Many grooves and streaks also cover the oddly shaped surface. The grooves are typically less than deep, wide, and up to in length, and were originally assumed to have been the result of the same impact that created Stickney. Analysis of results from the "Mars Express" spacecraft, however, revealed that the grooves are not in fact radial to Stickney, but are centered on the leading apex of Phobos in its orbit (which is not far from Stickney). Researchers suspect that they have been excavated by material ejected into space by impacts on the surface of Mars. The grooves thus formed as crater chains, and all of them fade away as the trailing apex of Phobos is approached. They have been grouped into 12 or more families of varying age, presumably representing at least 12 Martian impact events. However, in November 2018, following further computational probability analysis, astronomers concluded that the many grooves on Phobos were caused by boulders, ejected from the asteroid impact that created Stickney crater. These boulders rolled in a predictable pattern on the surface of the moon.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Faint dust rings produced by Phobos and Deimos have long been predicted but attempts to observe these rings have, to date, failed. Recent images from "Mars Global Surveyor" indicate that Phobos is covered with a layer of fine-grained regolith at least 100 meters thick; it is hypothesized to have been created by impacts from other bodies, but it is not known how the material stuck to an object with almost no gravity.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: The unique Kaidun meteorite that fell on a Soviet military base in Yemen in 1980 has been hypothesized to be a piece of Phobos, but this has been difficult to verify because little is known about the exact composition of Phobos.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: A person who weighs 68 kilogram-force (150 pounds) on Earth would weigh about 40 gram-force (2 ounces) standing on the surface of Phobos.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Geological features on Phobos are named after astronomers who studied Phobos and people and places from Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels".


title: Phobos (moon)

text: There is one named regio, "Laputa Regio", and one named planitia, "Lagado Planitia"; both are named after places in "Gulliver's Travels" (the fictional Laputa, a flying island, and Lagado, imaginary capital of the fictional nation Balnibarbi). The only named ridge on Phobos is "Kepler Dorsum", named after the astronomer Johannes Kepler.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: The orbital motion of Phobos has been intensively studied, making it "the best studied natural satellite in the Solar System" in terms of orbits completed. Its close orbit around Mars produces some unusual effects. With an altitude of , Phobos orbits Mars below the synchronous orbit radius, meaning that it moves around Mars faster than Mars itself rotates. Therefore, from the point of view of an observer on the surface of Mars, it rises in the west, moves comparatively rapidly across the sky (in 4 h 15 min or less) and sets in the east, approximately twice each Martian day (every 11 h 6 min). Because it is close to the surface and in an equatorial orbit, it cannot be seen above the horizon from latitudes greater than 70.4°. Its orbit is so low that its angular diameter, as seen by an observer on Mars, varies visibly with its position in the sky. Seen at the horizon, Phobos is about 0.14° wide; at zenith it is 0.20°, one-third as wide as the full Moon as seen from Earth. By comparison, the Sun has an apparent size of about 0.35° in the Martian sky. Phobos's phases, inasmuch as they can be observed from Mars, take 0.3191 days (Phobos's synodic period) to run their course, a mere 13 seconds longer than Phobos's sidereal period. As seen from Phobos, Mars would appear 6,400 times larger and 2,500 times brighter than the full Moon appears from Earth, taking up a quarter of the width of a celestial hemisphere.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: An observer situated on the Martian surface, in a position to observe Phobos, would see regular transits of Phobos across the Sun. Several of these transits have been photographed by the Mars Rover "Opportunity". During the transits, Phobos's shadow is cast on the surface of Mars; an event which has been photographed by several spacecraft. Phobos is not large enough to cover the Sun's disk, and so cannot cause a total eclipse.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Tidal deceleration is gradually decreasing the orbital radius of Phobos by approximately two meters every 100 years, and with decreasing orbital radius the likelihood of breakup due to tidal forces increases, estimated in approximately 30–50 million years, with one study's estimate being about 43 million years.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Phobos's grooves were long thought to be fractures caused by the impact that formed the Stickney crater. Other modelling suggested since the 1970s support the idea that the grooves are more like "stretch marks" that occur when Phobos gets deformed by tidal forces, but in 2015 when the tidal forces were calculated and used in a new model, the stresses were too weak to fracture a solid moon of that size, unless Phobos is a rubble pile surrounded by a layer of powdery regolith about thick. Stress fractures calculated for this model line up with the grooves on Phobos. The model is supported with the discovery that some of the grooves are younger than others, implying that the process that produces the grooves is ongoing.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Given Phobos's irregular shape and assuming that it is a pile of rubble (specifically a Mohr–Coulomb body), it will eventually break up due to tidal forces when it reaches approximately 2.1 Mars radii. When Phobos is broken up, it will form a planetary ring around Mars. This predicted ring may last from 1 million to 100 million years. The fraction of the mass of Phobos that will form the ring depends on the unknown internal structure of Phobos. Loose, weakly bound material will form the ring. Components of Phobos with strong cohesion will escape tidal breakup and will enter the Martian atmosphere.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: The origin of the Martian moons is still controversial. Phobos and Deimos both have much in common with carbonaceous C-type asteroids, with spectra, albedo, and density very similar to those of C- or D-type asteroids. Based on their similarity, one hypothesis is that both moons may be captured main-belt asteroids. Both moons have very circular orbits which lie almost exactly in Mars's equatorial plane, and hence a capture origin requires a mechanism for circularizing the initially highly eccentric orbit, and adjusting its inclination into the equatorial plane, most probably by a combination of atmospheric drag and tidal forces, although it is not clear that sufficient time is available for this to occur for Deimos. Capture also requires dissipation of energy. The current Martian atmosphere is too thin to capture a Phobos-sized object by atmospheric braking. Geoffrey A. Landis has pointed out that the capture could have occurred if the original body was a binary asteroid that separated under tidal forces.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Phobos could be a second-generation Solar System object that coalesced in orbit after Mars formed, rather than forming concurrently out of the same birth cloud as Mars.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Another hypothesis is that Mars was once surrounded by many Phobos- and Deimos-sized bodies, perhaps ejected into orbit around it by a collision with a large planetesimal. The high porosity of the interior of Phobos (based on the density of 1.88 g/cm, voids are estimated to comprise 25 to 35 percent of Phobos's volume) is inconsistent with an asteroidal origin. Observations of Phobos in the thermal infrared suggest a composition containing mainly phyllosilicates, which are well known from the surface of Mars. The spectra are distinct from those of all classes of chondrite meteorites, again pointing away from an asteroidal origin. Both sets of findings support an origin of Phobos from material ejected by an impact on Mars that reaccreted in Martian orbit, similar to the prevailing theory for the origin of Earth's moon.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Some areas of the surface have turned out to be reddish in color, while others are bluish. The hypothesis is that gravity pull from Mars makes the reddish regolith move over the surface, exposing relatively fresh, unweathered and bluish material from the moon, while the regolith covering it over time has been weathered due to exposure of solar radiation. Because the blue rock differs from known Martian rock, it could contradict the theory that the moon is formed from leftover planetary material after the impact of a large object.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Most recently, Amirhossein Bagheri (ETH Zurich), Amir Khan (ETH Zurich), Michael Efroimsky (US Naval Observatory) and their colleagues proposed a new hypothesis on the origin of the moons. By analyzing the seismic and orbital data from Mars InSight Mission and other missions, they proposed that the moons are born from disruption of a common parent body around 1 to 2.7 Billion years ago. The common progenitor of Phobos and Deimos was most probably hit by another object and shattered to form Phobos and Deimos.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Phobos has been photographed in close-up by several spacecraft whose primary mission has been to photograph Mars. The first was "Mariner 7" in 1969, followed by "Mariner 9" in 1971, "Viking 1" in 1977, Phobos 2 in 1989 "Mars Global Surveyor" in 1998 and 2003, "Mars Express" in 2004, 2008, 2010 and 2019, and "Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter" in 2007 and 2008. On 25 August 2005, the "Spirit" rover, with an excess of energy due to wind blowing dust off of its solar panels, took several short-exposure photographs of the night sky from the surface of Mars, and was able to successfully photograph both Phobos and Deimos.