In particle physics, the smallest problems often require the biggest solutions. Along the border of France and Switzerland, around a hundred meters underneath the countryside, protons speed through a 27-kilometer ring—about seven times the length of the Indy 500 circuit—until they crash into protons going in the opposite direction. These particle pileups produce a petabyte of data every second, the most interesting of which is poured into data centers, accessible to thousands of physicists world...