To answer this question, we first have to answer some questions about what “time” as a concept means. For this exercise, it’s better to think of time as another way we can measure our surroundings, rather than an absolute metric. This is because time can be manipulated by gravity. For example, gravity can slow time: the speed of light in a vacuum is constant, and space-time is warped by gravity. We find that the distorted space-time increases the distance a particle of light travels, slowing time.
Einstein showed us that space and time are intrinsically linked, so what does this mean for the big bang? It means that before the big bang, when everything in the universe was condensed into a singularity, there was no space, and consequently no time. It’s important to understand this concept to understand what the question “What existed before the big bang?” since we are coming at the question with our human concept of time in mind. Stephen Hawking was once quoted as answering this question as “what is south of the south pole?”, the analogy being that the south pole is what started and solidified our concept of “south”, the same way the big bang has defined our understanding of time, asking what is before time is such a complex topic, it almost doesn’t make sense. With that in mind, below we’ll look at the most popular theories about what existed before the big bang. It’s worth remembering here that while our models of the big bang are complex with a wealth evidence from different areas of science to support the model, the theories for before the big bang are much murkier. They are grounded in theoretical mathematics and physics and talk about what could be possible.
The simplest way to think of a white hole is as the polar opposite of a black hole. A black hole 
absorbs matter and the further an object is sucked into a black hole, the more energy is needed to get out. Once the object passed the event horizon, then it would need an infinite amount of energy to get out. You can think of a black hole as though you were falling down a hill and the further you fall, the more energy you would need to get back up the hill. A white hole is the opposite or this, you can’t get near it, it would be a hill that gets steeper and steeper as you get closer to it, so you would need an infinite amount of energy in order to reach it once you pass a certain point. White holes haven’t been observed in our universe, and don’t fit into our theoretical models of the observable universe, but the one situation they do fit is the big bang. The theory is that the universe started as a white hole, that continually spews out matter, and that matter is what we see around us.
Eternal inflation is the theory that the universe is an infinite size and is always experiencing inflation somewhere. This means that the observable universe that we know may just be one small part of a much larger universe which is experiencing an infinite amount of big bangs and inflation all the time. This would also mean that the universe never started but has always existed and always will. It would be impossible for us to see our universe from the outside because the space-time around us is expanding faster than the light outside our universe can get to us. This theory is also called the multi-verse theory because it means our universe has an infinite about of neighbor universes in their own bubbles.
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Big Crunch is the theory that at some point the universe will stop expanding, and reverse, collapsing in on its self and reverting back to a singularity. In this 
theory the universe could have been reborn multiple times, starting as a singularity, expanding, reverting back to a singularity and the cycle starts again. This theory is currently not well supported after it was observed that the universe’s expansion is actually accelerating, not being slowed down as the theory would require. For this reason, the theory has fallen out of favor with scientists. However, it is still possible since it is thought dark energy is causing the acceleration of the universe and very little is known about dark energy and how it operates. This means its possible dark energy may cease causing the acceleration at some point and the universe may start to collapse in on itself.
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This theory sounds a little like science fiction and requires an understanding of the theories above as well as conceptual thinking. This theory is linked to the multi-verse theory, that we aren’t alone in the universe, but rather one of many universes, but we are stuck inside a black hole and because we are below the event horizon, we are essentially stuck behind a wall and can never observe the other universes. At the center of a black hole is a singularity, the point in which matter is infinite, heavily compressed by the gravity created by its own mass. Because a black hole spins, there is also twisting going on in the center, meaning the mass inst just heavily compressed but wasn’t being twisted and torn. The theory postulates that this twisting eventually reaches a breaking point and the matter will be spewed out with a “bang”, a big bang. Since the big bang from the singularity our universe has been expanding, accelerating towards the event horizon, but as of yet we are still stuck behind it. This theory has many other theories connected to it, for example, the theory that the center of black holes is a portal to other universes, like the roots of trees overlapping at a single point.
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