Does it matter? Most significant discoveries have little (if any) impact on the average person's life. The importance of many discoveries can take decades to become apparent, and are little-understood when they are discovered. And if that doesn't matter, sometimes just knowing something instead of not knowing it is reason enough to be excited by it.

And if nothing else, it helps to close a gap (well... turn a big one into two smaller ones) for those who like to make leaps of faith between points of understanding instead of looking for answers in the middle.