Maybe you've been watching a little too much science fiction.....

I don't mean to post wikipedia articles, but it can explain it so much better than I can. I think you're thinking of the Large Hadron Collider being build in Switzerland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

There are several such machines around the world, but the one you are probably= thinking about is CERN - see http://www.cern.ch . See also Fermilabe in the US at http://www.fnal.gov/ . Normal matter as we understand it can be though of as in its "base state", which everything locked up in pretty stable particles. These particles can be though of as sealed boxes. In side them, there are probably other particles, which we cannot see at normal energies. The function of these huge machines is to shake the boxes really, really hard so we can either listen to the rattles or even break them apart to find out what they are made of. They are trying to find the fundamental particles of matter, and work out the rules of how these fundamental particles fit together.

There are actually a number of these devices in laboratories around the world. They're called Particle Accelerators. Probably the most famous Lab is at CERN in Switzerland. That facility is actually the one you are thinking of, as they're about to complete the construction of the largest accelerator in the world at around 27 Km in length. It's called the Large Hadron Collider. What the scientists are trying to accomplish are particle traffic accidents at unimaginable velocities. They get these particles moving around the "racetrack" by using massive magnets, the particles themselves are kept on course by those same electromagnets. When they've reached the speed they need for the experiment, the particles are let "off" the track to smash into the target material. That material could be lead , for example. There are detectors in the collision chamber to detect what's been emitted by the impact. In a nut shell, scientists are trying to delve deeper into the structure of matter and even the properties of antimatter. Here's a link to CERN's page on what experiments they hope to carry out http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Content/Chapters/AskAnExpert/Experiments-en.html and here's the main CERN website for the public http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Welcome.html

Trying to find the "God Particle"! The experiment is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It's a 27km circular tunnel under France and Switzerland. The tunnel was formerly used to collide electrons at high speeds. The new experiment will be colliding protons. 1837 times heavier. Tons more electromagnets will be needed. The protons will be going near to the speed of light. They won't like turning, not even a ring 27km around whose curve is barely noticable. Ordinary electromagnets would melt given the current needed. These electromagnets are superconducting electromagnets supercooled with liquid helium. LHC is the world's largest refridgeration installation. The protons will gain an energy of 7 TeV each. Unprecedented for a man-made experiment. 7 TeV however, isn't much in real terms ... A millionth of a joule. Enough to light a 1W light bulb for microsecond. What's it all for? The standard model of particle phyiscs (the best model we have and the most useful) says, in passing, that all particles should be massless and travel at the speed of light. This is a bit of embarrassment. Because they clearly aren't and don't. The best explanation so far is a new undiscovered particle called the Higgs Boson, nicknamed the "God Particle". The Higgs Boson crowds around ordinary particles and thus slows them down, makes them seem heavy. Although they're supposedly everywhere, they can't be detected unless there is a loose one hanging about somewhere. A loose one could be created by E=mc^2 if we could get enough energy packed into a small enough volume, without having to visit the interior of a supernova or something. The LHC is attempting to do just that. The amount of energy is tiny, but it is being packed by the biggest machine in the world, into the tiniest imaginable space. After a few years of sifting through the billions of particles generated that WEREN'T Higgs Bosons, (lighter particles get the best chance of creation unfortuately) it is hoped that some Higgs Bosons will be found. Einsteins dream of a Unified Law of Physics might finally be realized.