Astronomer says a massive Asteroid to pass by Earth on December 2017

Astronomers  have predicted the flyby of a Large asteroid named Phaethon 3200 at a distance very close to the Earth on December 17, 2017. This is quite a big asteroid and having a diameter of about 5  kilometres. An asteroid this big, on passing by definitely produce an astounding Meteor Shower which could be seen in some parts of the planet.

The astronomers  at Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University used their own developed Astro-Model simulation environment to produce a virtual image of Phaethon 3200.

This asteroid derives its name from its unusual orbit that in perihelia brings it closer to the Sun than any other named asteroid. However to explore the scales, if we compare Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun in the Solar system is twice as far as compared to this Asteroid.

Phaethon 3200 will also be accompanied by the Geminids meteor shower , which is at its most active on December 13-14, when as many as 100 meteors flicker in the sky and burn in the atmosphere without causing any harm. From time to time, observers will also see bright bolides. The meteor shower will be visible every year; Phaethon itself has had a number of close approaches to Earth.

"Based on the evidence, this asteroid was a bigger object before, but its many approaches to the Sun have caused it to crumble into smaller pieces that ended up forming the meteor shower. If so, the asteroid itself is the residue of a comet nucleus. This theory is corroborated by its extremely elongated orbit, which now brings it closer than Mercury to the Sun, and takes it farther away than Mars," Alexei Baigashov, Head of the Astronomer Community (AC) at Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University said.

However its not a discovery because this asteroid was firstly discovered in 1983 by NASA satellites.

The Geminids are a unique meteor shower due to the fact that their identified parent body is not a comet, but what seems to be an asteroid! Of the meteor showers with known parent bodies studied by meteor scientists, the Geminids are the only shower to have an asteroidal parent body; all others have a cometary origin. 3200 Phaethon measures 5-10 km in diameter which increases the 'unique' factor; considering the amount of debris we see, we would expect Phaethon to be a much larger body! 

As per NASA reports :

Phaethon is technically classified as an asteroid -- the first to be discovered via satellite. But how could an asteroid produce meteoroids that cause the Geminids? One theory is that Phaethon broke apart from another object, ejecting meteoroids as a part of the breakup. This doesn't agree with other things we know, however. Another theory is that a collision with another object thousands of years ago could have produced debris that Earth now travels through. This theory appears to be unlikely as well, based on other evidence. Another theory assumes Phaethon to be a dead comet (the spent nucleus of a comet whose ices had been sublimated away) that produced debris in the past that now intersects Earth's orbit. But no evidence for mass loss from the object has ever been reported.... until recently. In 2009 the NASA spacecraft STEREO-A observed 3200 Phaethon to brighten by a factor of two, quite unexpectedly. This brightening at perihelion was likely due to a release of dust from the object, possibly due to heating and cracking of the surface rocks as Phaethon came close to the Sun. That brings us to the fourth theory, that Phaethon is a rock comet. The problem with this theory is that it doesn't account for the amount of dust in the Geminid stream.