March 2010 saw the turn-on of the largest scientific apparatus ever built, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva Switzerland. The two large, general purpose experiments, ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), are attempting to answer the most fundamental questions in physics: What is mass, why is there matter, and what is our universe made of? This talk will give an overview of the LHC and the CMS experiment focusing on the potential discoveries that may change our view of the world around us. Some of the challenges, especially in computing, of working with a global collaboration of over 3000 scientists will also be explored.