Awesome pictures to be sure but this is not an actual picture of a White Dwarf being eaten by a black hole it is a simulation.
Ramirez-Ruiz and his collaborators--Stephan Rosswog of Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany, and William Hix of Oak Ridge National
Laboratory--used detailed computer simulations to follow the entire process of tidal disruption of a white dwarf by a black hole. Their simulations
included gas dynamics, gravity, and nuclear physics, requiring weeks of computer time to simulate events that would take place in a fraction of a
second. A paper describing their results has been accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters, and a preprint is currently available
online.
Source:
www.physorg.com...
it is a cool picture though and probably is worthy of being a desktop image.
