You have to distinguish the actual research from what is relayed by the article. These people are looking for proofs existence of a theoretical objects, the primordial black holes. Finding them would: 1. add proofs to the validity of the current model of the big bang and 2. help quantify the PBHs which we can then add with more certainty to the model. That's obviously very fundamental research, it's not going to lead to application any time soon, but general relativity was too in the 30' and yet we wouldn't have GPS without it.
