In a conversation with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Hawking explained that there was basically nothing going on before the Big Bang, which started our universe.*
"Nothing was around before the big, big bang," Hawking said. "According to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, space and time together form a space-time continuum or manifold which is not flat but curved by the matter and energy in it."* Read more...