It seems as if you forgot to finish reading the article.

I love cosmology, at least what I can grasp, which is admittedly small by scientific measure, because it gives a broader perspective on life and Earth. It fascinates me that an ape like creature could evolve to understand even the concept of space/time, let alone develope the mechanisms to see billions of years into the past. And it troubles me that we are so limited by our own imagination. And it makes me hopeful that we can see beyond the small, mean concept of god to one of infinite universes of infinite natures.

Charles likes space because it's black. (And it's where he came from - via his 'big-brained' daddy Ebenezer.)

I didn't expect that sentiment from you, Charles. The "If it's not something I enjoy learning about then it doesn't affect me" sentiment? Everything we do is infused with every one of the major fields of science at all times. And Cosmology? Astrophysics? We live in a cloud of stardust. Our orbit follows the laws of moving bodies in space. Solar flares are directly responsible for our current climate. Mutations in your genetic sequence, and all of evolution by extension, is the result of cosmic rays and radioactive disintegration causing changes in your DNA.

"Relativistic" theories about the nature of matter and the universe are not some lab nerd's hobby with no practical value. These people are at the forefront of human development. Unfortunately, nobody looks for value in the quest for knowledge and invention until it's used to produce a rocket or an iphone or the plot to an entertaining summer movie. Cosmology is not somewhere long ago in a galaxy far away. It's right here right now. You're breathing it. If you can't see why these questions need to be asked then you know too little about it, not too much.

@4:

Well said.

Has the universe ever mattered? And by universe I mean the scientific codification of the heavens. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in his pre-spiritualist pro-empiricist stage, wrote that Sherlock Holmes--the most worldly and logical of fiction's creations at that date--was unaware of Copernican theory of the earth revolving around the sun. As Holmes explains to an astounded Watson, " 'What the deuce is it to me?' he interrupted impatiently; 'you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.' "

@1) did i not say shake off?

The universe has NEVER mattered. Indeed, mattering doesn't matter; we don't do things or study things because they matter, we study things that pull us towards them. Who cares if it "matters"? What the universe does do is pull us towards the future, and without the future our present shrivels up and dies. Our current malaise is just that: a present with only a past to look at. There's no future anymore, and it's killing us. We need to develop a future immediately if we are to survive.

Carl Sagan's thoughts on that were quite inspiring:

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. We are creatures of the cosmos and always hunger to know our origins, to understand our connection with the universe. How did everything come to be? Every culture on the planet has devised its own response to the riddle posed by the universe. Every culture celebrates the cycles of life and nature. There are many different ways of being human.

A more intriguing question perhaps, is do we matter? Our galaxy is but a mote of cosmic dust in the vastness of the universe. Perhaps it is a filter of sorts, designed to capture all the impurities floating around out there, isolate them in a convenient place, and thereby make their disposal easier. There may-well be no other "life" in the universe, because "life" is an aberration, a defect, that needs to be separated from creation, and eliminated least it spread, and infect the rest. There are, so far, no signs of any other "life" out there in the universe. Of course we have barely waded out far enough to even form an intelligent opinion, but we will. I wonder how long it will take to gain any sort of "reasonable" data to make a prediction. Are we alone? I sure am.
PJB