Type Ia supernovae are explosions that occur when white dwarfs strip matter off a companion star, exceed their maximum possible mass, and blow up.
No, wait: type Ia supernovae are the explosions caused when two white dwarfs collide.
While it's reasonably certain that white dwarfs—the Earth-size remnant of stars similar to the Sun—are involved, the observational evidence for how these supernovae actually explode is messy. This week's issue of Nature is a prime example: two back-to-back papers provide evidence for a white dwarf-companion star explosion and a two-white-dwarf collision scenario, respectively. Ultimately, these apparently contradictory results could mean there are two distinct types of white dwarf supernovae... or that we still don't understand what's going on.
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