What prevents scientists from being able model what was before the Big Bang?
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It’s a simple thing, a singularity.
A singularity is a mathematical object rather than a physical one. To put it simply, it’s a point where our math is undefined, or spiralling into infinity. The best example would be dividing by zero.
There are a few such singularities we encounter in our theories of physics. The most famous one is the singularity at the center of a black hole. Another would be trying to model the universe through the viewpoint of light itself.
And there’s the singularity at the heart of the big bang. Do not confuse it as the big bang itself though, because the big bang is the moment **immediately after the creation of the universe**. It happens roughly 10^(−43) seconds and on after time zero. But at time zero, we get infinite temperatures and infinite densities. And because whenever you add, or substract or do anything else with an infinity only gets you infinity again, we cannot do math with a singularity, hence we cannot describe what happens at time zero, or the center of a black hole.
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