As far as I understand it, the machine itself is a circular tube of enormous length (around 27km long I think? don't quote me on that!) surrounded by an immense amount of cooling equipment to help it function efficiently. The function of the machine is a) to hurl protons at each other at immense speeds, shooting beams around the tube in opposite directions, thereby smashing them apart by brute force when they collide, and b) to observe what happens as a result. Quite what will be discovered by this, nobody is quite sure... that is one of the reasons that the whole project is so exciting! It is hoped in general terms that it will give a greater understanding of the different types of matter that exist (possibly even "anti-matter", whose existence is believed in by physicists but has never been observed), and hence further our understanding of, amongst other things, how conditions were immediately following the Big Bang and how the universe might have developed from there... but frankly, any discoveries are likely to have profound effects and implications in a large number of areas of physics.

"What is it? The Large Hadron Collider is a particle accelerator. Basically, it's a 27km long ring-shaped tunnel made mainly of superconducting magnets which sits 100m underground. It's situated close to Geneva, on the border between France and Switzerland. What does it do? It accelerates particles. Two beams of particles called hadrons — these are either protons or lead ions — will be send hurtling around the ring in opposite directions. They'll travel close to the speed of light at very high energies, and are encouraged to collide. Why does it do it? To answer some of the mysteries of the Universe. Physicists think that everything began around 13.7 billion years ago with the Big Bang. Back then the Universe was incredibly hot and dense. But in an instant it started to cool down and the various processes that gave rise to everything we see today sprung into action. To shed some light onto those things we don't yet understand about our Universe, it helps to look back to that first dramatic moment, to understand what ingredients went into making the world as we know it. The high-energy collisions produced by the LHC will re-create the conditions that governed the moments just after the Big Bang. Physicists hope that the collisions will create particles, even if only for a tiny instant, that have never been observed: they are the missing links of modern physics." Source and further information: http://plus.maths.org/latestnews/sep-dec08/lhc/index.html Further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LHC LHC( Large Hadron Collider) The Big Bang Machine: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ff5_1221022109