Neutrinos are tiny subatomic particles and 28 of them discovered recently by a South Pole detector make up a small fraction of an electron, but they will have massive a massive impact on the study of the universe.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the neutrinos are from deep space and the first from outside the solar system in nearly 26 years. An international team of astrophysicists used the IceCude Neutrino Observatory, buried deep below the South Pole ice, to pick the high-energy subatomic particles.

"This is the first indication of very high-energy neutrinos coming from outside our solar system, with energies more than one million times those observed in 1987 in connection with a supernova seen in the Large Magellanic Cloud," study principal investigator Francis Halzen, Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a press release. "It is gratifying to finally see what we have been looking for. This is the dawn of a new age of astronomy."

The researchers published their work Friday in the journal Science.

The billions of neutrinos that exist on the Earth today have either originated on the planet or from the sun, but the discovery of deep space neutrinos is significant. Since they are so highly energetic, they carry information on the most distant phenomena in the universe. This makes deep space neutrinos extremely rare and may give insights to supernovas, black holes, pulsars and other extragalactic events.

"From hints in earlier IceCube analyses, we have used improved analysis methods and more data to make a significant step forward in our search for the elusive astrophysical signal," collaboration spokesperson Olga Botner, of Uppsala University, said in the releae. "We are now working hard on improving the significance of our observation, and on understanding what this signal means and where it comes from."

According to the New York Times, the scientists named the neutrinos after characters from Sesame Street. The two most energetic ones are Bert and Ernie and two others were named Miss Piggy and Snuffelupagus. In data reported after the study was published, an ever more energetic neutrino was discovered and named Big Bird. The next step is to perform further observations to find the origin of the neutrinos.

IceCube also only observes one in a million neutrinos, meaning there are just under 28 million of the subatomic particles to be found.

"That's the kind of situation we love. A mystery may mean we may learn some fundamentally new science," Halzen told NYT. "We now know what we're looking for, and we'll figure it out."