What prevents scientists from being able model what was before the Big Bang?
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The key to understanding this problem requires you to know about [Planck Units](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units).
Planck time is the time it takes a photon to travel 1 Planck length and Planck length is the distance a photon travels in 1 Planck time.
Planck scale is where the physics equations that got you to this point break. It’s not just general relativity. This is the end of the line for quantum field theory too. All of the equations that do an incredibly amazing job at describing how systems evolve hit a hard stopping point.
Forget about modeling the universe at or before t=0, it can’t even be modeled for period of time after t=0. It’s not even clear if it makes any sense to talk about time within Planck time. At this point the definitions of distance and time no longer apply. In fact there would need to be a new way to define time and space in order to go further back.
The name for this period in big bang theory is the Planck Epoch. Calling it an epoch is funny. It lasted 1/10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000th of a second.
At this time, accepted physics has tied itself up in what hopefully is a Gordion knot. With no more physics, any attempt to go further requires stoners or philosophy undergraduates or apparently Nobel winning physicist [Roger Penrose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformal_cyclic_cosmology).
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