Most stars end their lives in brilliant explosions known as supernova. The past 15 years has been a "boom" period for supernovae with vast amounts of time and effort being invested in these objects. Our simplistic understanding of these objects has changed with the realization that a great dichotomy of these explosions can occur. Not only are they important for understanding the life of stars, but they can be used use as cosmological probes to characterize the dark energy equation-of-state, w. I will explain how our understanding of these objects has been revolutionized using new techniques including the Kepler Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, and what this means for the Universe.