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Here is a story from JonnySpace. C:\>

The Large Hadron Collider, under construction on the Swiss-French
border outside of Geneva, will be the most powerful particle
accelerator ever built. It is encased in a 17-mile circular tunnel
hundreds of feet underground. Inside the tunnel two vacuum
tubes will intersect, allowing the protons to smash into each other
while instruments observe the spray of subatomic particles the
the collisions will release. Scientists hope to detect the smallest
particles that make up the universe.

Many people ask, just exactly what are these particles?

The current theory of particle physics, known as the Standard Model,
states that all matter is made up of 12 basic particles and all energy
is made of four more particles. Each of these 16 particles have an
anti-matter equivalent as well. Matter is made of electrons, neutrinos,
protons and neutrons, which are made of two types of quarks,
designated as up and down. The other particles, which existed
for only a fraction of a second at the beginning of the universe,
will possibly be momentarily re-created by the collision of protons
in the particle accelerator. When the particles crash together, scientists
are hoping, they will produce tiny fireballs of primordial energy,
re-creating conditions that existed when the universe was less than
a trillionth of a second old.

You may say, that's awesome, what else are they working on?

Scientists also hope to find evidence of an additional particle predicted
by the Standard Model but not yet observed. The Higgs boson is
believed to create a field that permeates space and gives other
particles their mass. It may be the cause of dark matter, which makes
the universe act as though it has a lot more mass than can be observed.
Many scientists believe that finding the Higgs boson is the next vital
step in particle physics.

Come check out the world's largest particle research labratory
(not to mention the birthplace of the World Wide Web aka "WWW")
by clicking on the following link...
CERN the European Organization for Nuclear Research.