So there was just energy? Where did it come from? And why is that not considered the beginning of the universe opposed to the bbt

Because energy doesn't have form, it isn't something you can really count. When we give it numbers in engineering we are only calculating the changes but the base energy is something we can't deal with. Raw energy like electricity, heat, radiation, etc isn't physical. It's kind of just there, fueling physics.

So energy is "nothing?" Can you explain please. Edit: what exactly is energy? Edit: sorry I'm not too smart with this stuff, but it's interesting so I want to know. I never understood the Big Bang theory because I can't really understand how it came to be. How can there be a "beginning", what makes this specific point in time the beginning of the universe. Crazy to think about Edit: is this why the theory "energy cannot be created nor destroyed" makes sense? Man wtf, I need an explanation about energy. What is energy to us? how does it come to be? Is energy just something that's always there? Do people try to characterize energy to a state that makes it easier for people to learn? So many questions. Please answer!

Thats an incredibly difficult question. Basically energy is a property of atoms that can be transferred or converted but, according to the first law of thermodynamics, never created or destroyed. So basically there's a set amount of it that just keeps being converted. For example: power plants don't really produce power, they convert power. A hydroelectric power plant takes the energy from water flowing and uses it to spin a turbine. That turbine spins around a magnet with a small current running through a circuit and this converts the mechanical energy into electrical energy with about 60%-80% efficiency. The other 20%-40% is converted to heat energy, whether through the circuit or through friction. This heat is released into the environment, which in thermo we call a reservoir. A reservoir is simply a large volume that has enough mass that it won't change the energy of it. Energy comes in a lot of forms like potential, kinetic, mechanical, radioactive, heat, electrical, etc. But overall it's our way of describing how objects interact.

Photons are physical but non-massive they do interact with matter, though.

Photons aren't energy. They are a mix between waves are particles that we carry light and electromagnetic radiation through space. Gravitons are a good comparison, they're called force carriers and have 0 resting mass. But that's different than say raw heat energy.