  A popular science article designed to introduce people familiar with basic
cosmological nomenclature with models alternative to cosmological inflation.
The paper briefly discusses the modern view of the Big Bang model, inflation
(both its advantages and potential deficiencies). This is followed by a
discussion of historical alternative models and modern approaches such as
matter bounce, ekpyrotic Universe, Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, Hartle-Hawking
state and loop quantum cosmology. The final aspect of the paper is to present
the advantages and potential problems associated with alternative models and to
present the conceptual challenges associated with the uniqueness of cosmology
as a specific domain of physics.
