Dark matter may throw a monkey wrench into that timeline:
...One of the more intriguing questions is: "If a doomsday exists, how far are we from it?" After constraining the MZ parameter space via a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method, the authors found that by using the current observational data tBR - t0 = 103.5 Gyr for the best-fit result, and tBR - t0 = 16.7 Gyr at the 95.4% confidence level (CL) lower limit. Here tBR denotes the time of the big rip, and t0 denotes the present day. "In other words, at worst (95.4% CL), the time remaining before the Universe ends in a big rip is 16.7 Gyr", said the authors. Thus the constrained parameter space indicates that it is very likely that in the future w<-1. If so, one may ask another interesting question: "How about the destinies of the gravitationally bound objects in the Universe, such as galaxies and stars?"........
spacedaily.com
I would hate to miss out on the Boltzmann brain and the Poincaré recurrence time.
Seriously, though, the book cited in footnote 2 is a fascinating read:
Adams, Fred; Laughlin, Greg (1999). The Five Ages of the Universe. New York: The Free Press. ISBN 978-0-684-85422-9. |
