It can be said that time had no meaning before the Big Bang. If the Big Bang was the beginning of time, then there was no universe before the Big Bang, since there could not be any "before" if there was no time! Other ideas state that the Big Bang was not the beginning of time 13.8 billion years ago. Instead, some believe that there was a completely different universe before the Big Bang, and it may have been very different from the one we know today.