I have seen the dark universe yawning,
Where the black planets roll without aim;
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
without knowledge or lustre or name.

— from “Nemesis” by H.P. Lovecraft.

Astronomers have used new techniques to detect about 100 ‘dark’ planets moving madly through space rather than orbiting their home star, just as Lovecraft imagined. A rigorous examination of observation data has now given a new catalogue of 70-170 of these. The researchers conclude that there are so many of these in the observed area that… “planets formed around stars and then banished to the blackness must be an important contribution” to their number. It then follows, as they suggest, that billions of unknown sun-less ‘black planets’ must roll through the cold wastes between the stars.

Other research has discovered ‘untethered black holes’, which have no black disk of matter pulled in around them — but can still be detected by the bending of light.