Sensors buried 1.5 kilometres under the South Pole have detected the first traces of elusive particles known as ‘cosmic messengers’ created by exploding stars and black holes.

The high-energy neutrino particles interact so little with matter that they pass through walls, human bodies and even entire planets without being noticed.

Scientists who reported the first detection of neutrinos from outside the solar system said the discovery could usher in a new astronomical era.

“This is a huge result,” said Darren Grant, from the University of Alberta, Canada.

“It could mark the beginning of neutrino astronomy.”

Until now, scientists have only seen low-energy neutrinos originating in the earth’s atmosphere or from further out within the solar system.

Neutrinos were also detected from one rare nearby supernova, or exploding star, known as 1987A.

But the neutrinos observed by the Antarctic scientists are of an altogether different order.

Scientists believe the particles, streaming across the universe at very high energies, are generated in the cores of distant exploding stars or the stormy conditions surrounding black holes.

They were found by IceCube, a detector consisting of more than 5,000 sensors suspended like beads on a necklace along 86 strings embedded in a cubic kilometre of ice.

The particles are spotted by looking for Cherenkov radiation – tiny flashes of blue light produced by neutrinos colliding with water molecules.

Over the course of two years, IceCube scientists captured a total of 28 neutrinos with energies greater than 30 teraelectronvolts (TeV).

Two of the particles had energies in excess of 1,000 TeV.

By comparison, the Large Hadron Collider atom-smashing

machine that found the Higgs boson mass particle is designed to generate energies of up to 15 TeV.

Principal IceCube investigator Francis Halzen, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US, said: “This is the first indication of very high-energy neutrinos coming from outside our solar system.

“This is the dawn of a new age of astronomy.”

The results appear in the latest edition of the journal Science.

Billions of neutrinos pass through every square inch of the earth each second, but rarely interact with matter because they carry no electrical charge.

Neutrinos from the outer reaches of our galaxy, the Milky Way, or beyond could provide new insights into exotic cosmic phenomena such as supernovae, black holes, pulsars, and active galactic nuclei, scientists believe.