The foundational origins of diverse cosmic phenomena remain enduring enigmas. The LHC decisively tests longstanding cosmological origin hypotheses for dark matter such as supersymmetry, and mass genesis via the Higgs mechanism. Meanwhile, muons from high-energy cosmic rays are the archetypal ‘who ordered that?’ surprise and fittingly, recent muon measurements could be challenging standard paradigms again. The ATLAS experiment confronts these puzzles while pioneering innovations including photon collisions, forward detectors, heavy-ion beams, and unconventional datasets. Beyond colliders, quantum sensing progress enables next-generation haloscopes to illuminate axion-like origins of dark matter above microwave frequencies. This forms the basis for the recently-proposed Broadband Reflector Experiment for Axion Detection (BREAD) and its interdisciplinary science program bridging astronomy, particle physics, and quantum technology communities.