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Dan Quinn: Full participation in practice today; trending in right direction for Week 1  Hogs Haven

Dylan Cook trending to start at right tackle for Steelers Week 1  Behind the Steel Curtain

4 Players Trending Up & Down (2026 Fantasy Football)  FantasyPros

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2. Apple (AAPL) Sets iPhone Launch Event. The First Under New CEO John Ternus  Yahoo Finance
3. Apple to Kick Off Ternus Era With Its Biggest-Ever Slate of New Products  Bloomberg.com
4. Tim Cook Won't Appear in Apple's September 9 Event Video  macrumors.com
5. The real reason your phone is getting more expensive  The Verge

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2. Xiaomi’s wide foldable promises more power than Samsung’s  The Verge
3. I Actually Really Like Xiaomi’s Folding iPhone Ultra Rival  CNET
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4. DLSS 5 Testing Ends in a Melted RTX 5090 Connector, Power Shoots Past 600 W  TechPowerUp
5. NVIDIA DLSS 5 Cripples Most PCs in Modded Games, but DLSS 5 Autopilot Restores Playable Performance  Wccftech

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4. Gizmodo’s Best of IFA 2026 Awards: See the Winners  Gizmodo
5. Best of IFA for Apple users: DJI, Belkin, Lexar, Aqara, Philips Hue, & more  AppleInsider

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Editor’s Note: Today’s story is the answer to the September Puzzler.

Several of the outcrops at Vasquez Rocks Natural Area in Southern California jut from the arid landscape of the Soledad Basin at remarkable angles. Geologists estimate that the tilt of sedimentary rock strata found in the area averages 50 degrees, steep enough that many of the otherworldly formations appear to point toward the stars.  

That’s fitting, in some ways, because the rocks have served as one of the Star Trek franchise’s favorite backdrops ever since the show’s inaugural season, when Captain James T. Kirk scrambled up the jagged terrain during an iconic battle with a member of a reptilian alien species.

Viewed from space, the Vasquez Rocks are considerably less dramatic, but they show up clearly as bands of gray nestled between mountain ranges in these false-color (left) and natural-color (right) images captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9. The false-color view (bands 6-5-4) incorporates shortwave-infrared and near-infrared observations that accentuate differences in the landscape’s vegetation in comparison to the natural-color image on the right.

The Vasquez Rocks didn’t start out pointing skyward. When they were forming 25 million years ago, sediment was spread across alluvial fans—cone-shaped deposits that develop as fast-moving streams empty onto relatively flat plains. The sediment likely hadn’t traveled far, much of it eroding from nearby uplands. Over time, the alluvial fan deposits were buried and cemented into thick layers of sandstone and conglomerate rock.

Over millions of years, the region was then reshaped by the interaction of tectonic plates just to the east. Two plates grind past each other along a boundary that includes the San Andreas Fault, a strike-slip fault where the North American plate moves southeast and the Pacific plate northwest, contributing to the powerful tectonic forces that ripple throughout the region.

Eventually this tectonic activity led to the uplift and deformation of the Soledad Basin, with sedimentary layers gradually tilting, folding, and rotating. Once they were exposed at the surface, millions more years of weathering and erosion sculpted the formations further, removing softer material and leaving the more resistant sandstone and conglomerate fins and ridges that wow visitors today.

The rock formations represent far-flung moons and planets in several other Star Trek episodes and Vulcan, Spock’s home planet, in two Star Trek movies. Other productions have highlighted the Vasquez Rocks as well. They make appearances in dozens of other television shows and movies, including the science fiction series Westworld, For All Mankind, and Battlestar Galactica.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.

References & Resources

• County of Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation, Vasquez Rocks Natural Area. Accessed September 4, 2026.
• Directors Guild of America (2003, November) Vasquez Rocks. Accessed September 4, 2026.
• Hendrix, E. & Ingersoll, R. (1987) Tectonics and alluvial sedimentation of the upper Oligocene/lower Miocene Vasquez Formation, Soledad basin, southern California. GSA Bulletin, 98(6), 647-663.
• Los Angeles Times (2016, September 8) How Vasquez Rocks, L.A.’s onetime outlaw hideout, became ‘Star Trek’s’ favorite alien landscape. Accessed September 4, 2026.
• NASA (2021, September 8) 55 Years Ago: Star Trek Debuts, Begins an Enduring Relationship with NASA. Accessed September 4, 2026.
• Painter, D. (2023, July 28) Didn’t I see these rocks in the movies? Yes, of course—they are the Vasquez Rocks. Accessed September 4, 2026.
• Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society, via YouTube (2026, February 23) Vasquez Rocks, California | Natural History. Accessed September 4, 2026.
• ScreenRant (2024, May 26) All 10 Star Trek Episodes Filmed At California’s Vasquez Rocks. Accessed September 4, 2026.
• SCVTV (2016) Land of the Sunny Slopes: A History of Vasquez Rocks. Accessed September 4, 2026.
• Space.com (2026, September 4) Trekkies honor ‘Star Trek’s’ 60th birthday with fan events, special screenings, and a world record Vulcan salute. Accessed September 4, 2026.

Winter near the Antarctic Circle brings months of frozen darkness, when sea ice chokes ocean waters and many of its denizens hunker down to ride out the harsh conditions. But as winter began to release its icy grip, an uncommonly clear satellite image revealed that part of this remote realm was still very much awake, at least volcanically speaking.

Mount Michael, the stratovolcano at the center of Saunders Island, rises above the ice-filled South Atlantic Ocean in this image, acquired with the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on the NASA-USGS Landsat 8 satellite on August 24, 2026. The natural-color image is overlaid with an infrared signal (OLI bands 7-6-5), shown in red, revealing heat from the persistent lava lake in its summit crater. A puff of a volcanic plume hovering over the peak, along with darkened snow on its northern slopes, also suggests ongoing activity.

Saunders Island is one of the South Sandwich Islands, a string of small volcanic peaks about 350 kilometers (220 miles) long that formed from the South American plate subducting beneath the tiny South Sandwich plate. Regular eruptions, including at Mount Michael, have occurred on these islands in recent centuries.

Because of the volcanoes’ remoteness, scientists rely on satellite data to understand their activity. An analysis of thermal anomalies in Landsat, Sentinel, and ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) observations spanning 30 years led researchers to conclude that Mount Michael hosts a persistent lava lake in its summit crater. Only a handful of other volcanoes on Earth, including Kīlauea, Nyamulagira, and Erta Ale, are known to have similar, frequently active features.

Thermal observations from the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) and VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instruments have also enabled long-term monitoring of Mount Michael. Data provided through MIROVA, a near-real-time volcanic hot spot detection system, indicate that low-intensity activity has been ongoing at the volcano for the past several years. Other observations from NASA’s Aura satellite show that emissions of sulfur dioxide and other gases are common at Mount Michael.

The cloud-free window over Mount Michael would close in short order. One week later, when Landsat 9 passed over the island, a more active atmosphere had returned. But the weather patterns interacted with the island to put on a spectacle of their own. The 843-meter-high (2,766-foot-high) peak jutting from the ocean disturbed passing winds to produce a series of wave clouds resembling the wake of a ship, a familiar phenomenon in this region. False-color imagery captured by NASA’s Aqua satellite indicates that a volcanic track caused by degassing sulfur dioxide was likely present as well.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Lindsey Doermann.

References & Resources

• Global Volcanism Program (2026) Saunders. Accessed September 4, 2026.
• Gray, D.M., et al. (2019) Evidence for a lava lake on Mt. Michael volcano, Saunders Island (South Sandwich Islands) from Landsat, Sentinel-2 and ASTER satellite imagery. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 379, 60-71.
• MIROVA (2026) Michael. Accessed September 4, 2026.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2020, June 23) Volcanic Emissions Can Change Clouds. Accessed September 4, 2026.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2020, February 28) Sandwiched Wave Clouds. Accessed September 4, 2026.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2019, July 19) Lava Lake Discovered on Mount Michael. Accessed September 4, 2026.
• NASA Earthdata (2020, July 28) Sensing Remote Volcanoes. Accessed September 4, 2026.

Eric Wu, who built and ran Opendoor before stepping away in 2022, has had his new company, NavigateAI, out of stealth since May — building AI copilots that give construction workers real-time, hands-free guidance through smartphones and Meta's AI glasses, backed by $25 million from Elad Gil, Khosla Ventures, and Lennar to tackle a labor shortage severe enough that data center projects alone now need 4,000 to 5,000 workers apiece.

The rise of AI has brought an avalanche of new terms and slang. Here is a glossary with definitions of some of the most important words and phrases you might encounter.

Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's secret Elizabeth Holmes documentary, "You Can See Everything," stunned Telluride audiences Sunday night with its generous access to the Theranos founder.

While Apple's first foldable iPhone Ultra will headline the September 9 launch, we're also expecting news about AirPods and HomePods.

Schiller reportedly had reservations about new CEO John Ternus' goal of bringing in more recurring revenue from the App Store.