> "how is this research going to be useful in the long run ?" We don't know. However, black holes are close to the limit of our scientific knowledge. We don't

> "how is this research going to be useful in the long run ?" We don't know. However, black holes are close to the limit of our scientific knowledge. We don't know what happens on the other side of an event horizon (and we may never know, at least not experimentally). Learning more about them means learning more about the universe, and every once in a while we make a breakthrough that leapfrogs our technology. There's nothing else that we can do with so much potential. Most of the time though, the progress is quite 'boring', at least if you are not in a related field.