15 May 2013 Last updated at 13:10 ET By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

An experiment buried beneath the ice of the South Pole has for the first time seen the particles called neutrinos originating outside our Solar System.

They are produced in our atmosphere and in the Universe's most violent processes, but the IceCube experiment has seen the first "cosmic neutrinos".

It detected 28 of the exceptionally fast-moving neutrinos - but it remains unclear exactly where they came from.

The pioneering finds could herald an entirely new branch of astronomy.

The results were presented on Wednesday at the IceCube Particle Astrophysics Symposium in Wisconsin, US.

Researchers have gathered there to discuss the findings of the world's largest neutrino detector, occupying a cubic kilometre. It is made up of 86 strings sunk into the Antarctic ice, each with 60 sensitive light detectors strung along it like "fairy lights".

As neutrinos pass, they very rarely bump into the nuclei of atoms in the ice, producing a brief flash that the detectors can catch. With more than 5,000 detectors catching flashes at different times, the direction of the neutrinos' arrival can be determined.

Neutrinos can be produced in our own atmosphere here on Earth - IceCube picks up about 100,000 of them a year - but previous attempts to associate them with more far-flung cosmic processes, such as those described in April 2012, have turned up nothing.

However, in April this year, the IceCube collaboration reported seeing two neutrinos - nicknamed Bert and Ernie - of energies greater than a "petaelectronvolt".

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Neutrinos spark 'new astronomy era'