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“Before” the Big Bang is nonsense. It’s equivalent to saying “head north from the North Pole.”
It's not so much that we know there was nothing before it, but that we can't figure out what was before it.
No, in our current best-supported model of the universe (Lambda-CDM) the concept of “before” the Big Bang is meaningless. It is the apex of the spacetime “bell” from which everything emerged.
But something must have triggered the big bang. The model might not support this, but this only means the model is insufficient to describe what goes beyond our known universe.
But something must have triggered the big bang.
That's a separate claim you'd have to prove. We have no evidence of something triggering it, we don't even know that it would need to be triggered. All of our observations occur inside this universe, therefore we have no idea at all if cause-and-effect even applies to the universe as a whole. The short answer is: we don't know and have no reason to posit the need for something else.
What does it mean for something to be "beyond" everywhere or before time?
I wish we could see beyond our universe, I want to know so much.
That’s a philosophical question, not a scientific one, since it’s by definition beyond the ability of science to answer. It suffers from the infinite regress problem which many people invoke God to solve (the uncaused cause) but that’s not very satisfying, is it?
Obviously God did it. /s
Seems like a distinction without a difference, I sort of assumed the OP meant that is all I mean. We don't know anything before the beginning after all. Like you said.
very nice analogy. I'm stealing it.
I still think that means I have to up towards Polaris.