Residents were shocked after hearing a loud bang that caused alarms and shook the windows around 3pm on Saturday. The explosive noise was heard in three provinces: Dorset, Devon and Somerset.
A taxi driver in Jersey managed to film the object the moment it entered the atmosphere.
The Ministry of Defense said the blast was not related to RAF activities, while FlightRadar24 showed no activity by military jets in the area.
The police were also surprised – and excluded criminal activities.
Astronomer Will Gater believes that bright light was a large meteorite and that he shared the sound of the tree.
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“I checked and people who heard Dorset too.”
George Thorpe in the town of Exminster, near Exeter, saw a “strange plane in the air”.
He added: “Could not get a photo because it was too cloudy and passed fairly quickly, but seemed to break the sound barrier.”
A sonic surge is caused when an object breaks the noise limit – which requires a speed of 770 mph.
Meteors are a rock that burns when it enters the Earth’s atmosphere.
An estimated 48.5 tons of meteoric material falls to Earth every day, Nasa says.
The British Geological Survey tweeted: “PROBABLE SONIC EVENT: SOMERSET, DEVON AND DORSET
‘BGS has no evidence of any seismic event in the area by about 3pm today.
“However, the descriptions provided by the public are consistent with the descriptions usually experienced by a sonic boom.”