What prevents scientists from being able model what was before the Big Bang?
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Imagine you are locked inside a box (don’t worry, it’s a very nice box, very comfortable!)
You spontaneously came into existence in that box. You and everything inside that box have always been inside that box.
There’s no way out of the box. Nothing gets into the box. There’s no way to tell what’s outside the box in any way, and everything inside the box spontaneously came into existence inside that box.
From that point, how could you possibly know what was outside the box? You could come up with some ideas, but there’s no way to test them. You can make some observations about the shape of the box and how it’s changing, but the box is very very large and you can’t see the edges, and even if you could it only helps you guess.
Asking what was before the big bang is like asking what’s outside the box. We can make some guesses, but mostly those are confined to how the box was made, and we may simply never know what is outside the box.
The box, and the big bang, are event horizons. A point at which nothing beyond can effect the observer, and correspondingly the observer cannot see beyond the horizon.
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