“But what was the universe the instant before the “Big Bang”?”
Well, there was no “instant before” since time doesn’t exist until after the big bang. But of course, if time doesn’t exist, then nothing can change, so the Big Bang can’t happen. So it’s a self-defeating proposition.
Well, I’m still trying to find out where God came from......to everything there is a beginning so where is the beginning of God?
The Higgs boson was confirmed at CERN in 2014 and we’re still here so I think the hysteria over tiny black holes is overdone. The “god particle” name was actually coined by a physicist as a joke just to tweak the lay public’s interest. The real reason it is so important is that it is responsible for giving mass to other particles which slowed them to less than the speed of light, made nuclear and chemical processes possible, and resulted in planets and biology and humans.
Although the matter and energy we know and love condensed from the symmetry breaking event known as the “big bang” what is truly eternal is the behavior of what we model mathematically as the quantum field wave function Psi. There may have been and infinite number of universes before and after ours but we’ll always have Psi, kid.
I don't believe time is another dimension as most say. I believe it is a human construct. Yes, I know about long space journeys in relation to the Earth, and about the event horizon around black holes. Give me all the math you want and I'll still say those are calculations on a white board and that humanity made up time to deal with its ever changing existence.