I believe the commonly-quoted figure of 100,000 years comes from this paper:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.3143
The figure mainly derives from fitting the star's observed properties to computed evolutionary models. The best fit indicates that Betelgeuse has farily recently started burning helium in a shell around the accumulating carbon-oxygen core, which is the event that triggers the onset of the red supergiant phase. That model further predicts that it will take about 100,000 years for sufficient mass to accumulate to trigger the onset of carbon burning. The supernova would follow a short time after that (how short isn't addressed in the paper, but IIRC on the order of centuries at most). The uncertainly stems from the inability to say precisely how recently helium shell burning began, but it sounds like cross-checking with alternate models mostly yielded larger numbers than 100,000 years, not shorter.
My take on the recent dimming: Betelgeuse experiences huge "star spots" caused by coherent convection cells - the largest noted in that paper took up nearly one-third of its visible surface and contributed over 20% of its total luminosity. It's certainly possible for an unusually dark spot to have formed on the side facing us, and it's hard to say how long such a thing could last. If it
is a star spot, I'd expect confirmation in the coming weeks-to-months, as surely someone will be applying for time on a large interferometric instrument to try and resolve spatial features on the surface (Betelgeuse is one of the few stars with a large enough apparent size that this is possible).
When smart people guess, it's still just guessing even though they're smart. It's called speculation and conjecture and none of it is fact. almost everything we know about space outside of our solar system is pretty much theory isn't it? I mean, we can do the math and come to logical conclusions, but nothing can be proved right?
No, that's not how any of this works.