They spin so fast, I'm wondering if this isn't a bug. I mean, do you realize the speed at which those have to be turning? I don't think it could even maintain its integrity.
It's not a bug.
Some stars, neutron stars i.e. pulsars, spin almost 1000 times per second. Google for milisecond pulsar.
Something that weights as much as the Sun, and is the size of Manhattan, spinning around 1000 times every second.
Insane stuff.
The star models don't yet seem capable of reproducing the actual distortions found in actual stars.
Something spinning as fast as one of them in the vid would be a little distorted but not much, Stars are incredibly massive and have a lot of gravity holding them together. It would be an oblate spheroid, similar to the Earth, though. As far as I can tell that's not currently being modelled.
In the real universe it would seem that most "solid" objects, stars, planets etc..., only get to be oblate or have reasonably small distortions. It may be that only really large objects that are loosely gravitationally bound and have some angular momentum, that actually form into discs. I don't think it's possible for a star. Possibly due to the proximity of the core and the effect it would have on the internal density. The star may stop shining if it were too oblate.
Most neutron stars are almost perfect spheres that are held rigid by their gravity. Some of the really fast spinning ones are slightly oblate but only by a very tiny percentage I think.
So the simulation is pretty accurate but for completeness the fast spinning objects do need to be shown as oblate spheres. whether we would be able to detect that they are oblate is another matter. They may already be so but we can't detect it without instrumentation. Our brains and eyes may be nowhere near good enough to detect it. Like in the sun. Looks perfectly round to us. But it's definitely an oblate spheroid. Same with the Earth.
