Scientists Fire Up the World’s Largest Particle Accelerator: 300 feet below the French village of Crozet lies the world’s most powerful particle accelerator – the Large Hadron Collider. The goal being building such a monstrosity - no less than unraveling what the universe is made of. In a few months this machine will fire two beams of particles at close to the speed of light at one another to essentially see what happens when they collide.