It was originally discovered in 1999 but was shelved for over a decade due to insufficient funding. As I understand it, they only received funding in 2018 and became more confident in their discovery after that.
I agree, the world still doesn't really care about science. And yet everyone's living lives that are all the more better because of science.
It's a human problem, we only care about what happens to us or our tribe and most of our focus is not very forward looking. We're better than other animals as evolution favoured us looking just a little more forward than other animals, but now we have to escape the timekeeping of our meaty flesh and think "if we dump money into science then this generation will get some cool stuff and the next will get a shit tonne of cool stuff".
Here is some (speculative?) backstory: https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1684385895565365248
It is a tragic shame in hindsight, but no doubt there are many earth-shattering discoveries lying within reach, if only we knew where to look.