The tech world was rocked by two major stories this week, each from opposites sides of the size spectrum. First there was the debut of Apple's latest iPod Nano, which was all about getting it as small and thin as possible. Then on Wednesday was the first operational day of the Large Hadron Collider, the largest particle accelerator ever built. Of course, we all over both of them.

We were very pleased to be one of the first to show the world just how beautiful the collider looks, and tell all about its many incredible, mind-blowing facts. Not only that, but we saw the lighter side of it in this rap video, and put together this LHC quiz.

Of course, when Apple did its thing on Tuesday, we jumped on it with a plethora of stories, including:

• • Apple upgrades iPod Nano, delivers colors and a bigger screen
  
• • Size comparison: How big is the new nano?
  
• • iPod Touch gets an upgrade, integrated Nike+ support
  
• • NBC returns to iTunes, now in HD
  
• • Apple iTunes 8 released
  
• • Apple discontinues 160GB iPod Classic, new model holds only 120GB… WTF?
  
• • The Evolution of the iPod Nano
  
• • 5 reasons the new iPod Nano is boring

Besides LHC and Apple news, here were the top headlines of the week:

Monumental 10,000 Year Clock to be built on Nevada mountaintop
Author Neal Stephenson is in on the project, too.

Super Genintari combines four classic consoles in one package
Your classic gaming, now all in one spot.

SanDisk debuts biggest CompactFlash card ever
You'll kill your battery before you fill up this sucker.

We finally get to see the Chevy Volt electric car
It's not quite what we expected, but color us impressed. And green.

New Microsoft Zune music players rolling out today
The iPod wasn't the only new music player to drop this week.

Plastic Logic creates larger, thinner flexible electronic newspaper using E Ink
E-newspapers are finally here.

SHIFT: Why Knol is Google's worst idea ever
Even the search giant can have an off day, as its attempt to clone Wikipedia shows.