Will we ever know if there was something before the big bang?

My thoughts have long been that the universe follows the big bounce concept. This fits the uncertainty about the amount of matter in the universe, so there may still be an eventual contraction even though data indicate the expansion is accelerating. This also accounts for stars and galaxies that formed within a million years of the big bang - they actually formed before the big bang, slipping through the sphincter of the hourglass intact. So our universe is getting broader, but will collapse, get real hot and small, dissociate most matter to subatomic particles (except a few stars and galaxies) then explosively expand and cool again as in the present cycle, now 14B years in the making.

I like to think it recycles. The idea that gravity eventually pulls everything back to a singularity that re-explodes made me happy, until it ran into apparent evidence of the opposite happening.

I hope there is an underlying structure or dimension that we see a partial representation of, and things will become clear when we get out of our Avatars and rejoin some sort of universal mind or continuum.

But that is Religion, or Science Fiction, or Fantasy. Or Philosophy. Or something Unscientific.

Or is it?

Donno. But an endlessly recycling reality is easier on my brain than everything popping in, living, and dying a slow spreading death, and that is it forever.

Still doesn't answer the WHY question. That one we are stuck with forever, I think.

Dammit Jim! I'm a Historian, not a physicist, so my concept of what came "before" the Big Bang is based on decades of watching/reading Science Fiction. The multidimensional multiverse is beyond my comprehension, but maybe a massive Black Hole there tunneled through the fabric of spacetime, creating the bubble we call our universe. To an observer in our universe, this appears as the "Big Bang." I believe the multiverse is eternal (why not?) and that it has spawned an untold number of baby universes beyond our ability (for now) to access. So all we can comprehend at this point in space and time is our own cosmos. That's enough for me because thinking about our universe alone makes me dizzy. I know that I am the center of this universe, and yet I am completely insignificant. We are a primitive species trying to make sense of our brief existence. It's the search for knowledge that makes life worth living.

Obvious the universe is old. Old enough to be eaten or eat. It must be alive in some sense.maybe on the chase or being chased. It's not entirely obvious that it is ad big as we think it is either. Depends on perspective. Our perspective may be much more jaded than we could possibly believe. More out of the box thinking is definitely required but is discouraged it seems

The question is silly. That the universe exists is a tautology. And the idea that the universe could not exist makes no sense. The universe is all there is. If the universe did not exist in some "before" or will not exist in some "future," there would have been or will be nothing. How can there "be" nothing? If that nothing really had properties that led to the coming into existence of our universe, it couldn't properly be called "nothing" and should properly be regarded as a phase in the existence of our universe. And if, in some sense, this is the only universe, then it must be, in some sense by definition, infinite and without bound in time, space, or whatever. And if this is not the only universe--i.e., if there are or have been or will be other universes--then what we've been calling the universe isn't really the universe; rather, it would be the collection of all these other universes that would be the only thing properly called the universe, and that universe would by definition be infinite and without bound in time, space, or whatever.