A fantastic Horizon documentary which aired a couple weeks ago, looking at resolving the standard model theory for the big bang via an experiment in November 2007. From Wikipedia:

Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle accelerator and collider located at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland ( 46°14′00″N, 6°03′00″E). Currently under construction, the LHC is scheduled to begin operation (at reduced energies) in November 2007. Recent developments indicate that it will not be running before early 2008.[citation needed] The LHC is expected to become the world's largest and highest energy particle accelerator in 2008, when commissioning at 7 TeV is completed. The LHC is being funded and built in collaboration with over two thousand physicists from thirty-four countries, universities and laboratories.

When switched on, it is hoped that the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson particle — often dubbed the God Particle — the observation of which could explain how other elementary particles gain mass and fill in the gap in the Standard Model theory.

The collider is contained in a 27 kilometre (17 mi) circumference tunnel located underground at a depth ranging from 50 to 150 metres.[1] The tunnel was formerly used to house the LEP, an electron-positron collider.