A Different Look at Type Ia Supernovae
Despite their pivotal role in cosmology and other fields of Astronomy, Type Ia Supernovae (SNe) remain mysterious in many ways. Among the fundamental issues that are still being debated are the identity of the progenitor sytems and the detailed physics involved in the explosion. Decades of efforts devoted to observing and interpreting the light curves and spectra of Type Ia SNe have only provided partial answers to these questions. I will present some results obtained using a different approach: the study of the excellent X-ray observations of young supernova remnants originated in Type Ia explosions provided by XMM and Chandra. Careful modeling of these observations based on hydrodynamic and nonequilibrium ionization simulations can rule out several scenarios for the explosion mechanism and the presupernova evolution of the progenitors with a high degree of confidence.