Yes, this technology is called as "AJAX"

Tutorials

30 Fresh AJAX Tutorials And Techniques  www.noupe.com

Ajax for Beginners  stag-webmonkey.advancemags.com

If your data is too complex to pre-load as ck suggested, you can create a
PHP page that generates JSON as your output.  Using a library like
jQuery you could then pull that data into the page for handling.