> - Current observations and known physics suggest that the known universe, at some point in the past, existed in a very hot state, at a very dense/small scale (by human standards). What happened (or existed) before this point is completely unknown.

Yep

> - There is no evidence or indication to determine a big 'bang' - in the more literal sense - actually occurred prior to this point. Thats just our extrapolated/romanticised way of explaining how we arrived from the earliest-understood-limits of the above (small+dense universe)... to present day observations of a big-cool-increasingly-expanding universe (either realtime or via obvservational glimpses effectively back into long ago via JamesWebb/Hubble etc). > > - There is no evidence to suggest there was 'nothing' at a point prior to this expansion. Thats just a extrapolated/romanticised way of answering the tantalizing question 'what came before?' in a neat way the human mind can quantify. > > - There is no evidence to suggest anything/everything was actually 'created' in the Big bang. Thats just our extrapolated/romanticised way of imagining how the universe came to be. Our knowledge of current physics and models simply state that the universe was once in a dense, small space... nothing about whether it said material was actually 'created' in some kind of event prior to this snapshot state.

Many widely accepted models indicate that spacetime as a whole (ie time + 3D space + all the energy) started at the big bang, so "before" or "prior" have essentially no meaning in this context.

And yeah, our current models of physics have no meaningful suggestions for how the universe began in such a state, just that it did.

Fundamentally, it's the only white hole we've been able to observe - but how or why 4D spacetime plus energy is streaming from this zero surface is essentially unknowable until and unless we find ways to experimentally probe higher dimensional stuff outside our universe (eg Branes).