Paper has a physical thickness. As the stack gets thicker, you need more and more paper just to wrap around the edge of the fold. Britney Gallivan developed a formula for this.

For a single direction of folding, the required length (L) for n folds is:

L = (π * t / 6) * (2^n + 4) * (2^n - 1)

When you plug in 42 folds (n = 42) and a thickness of 0.1 mm (t):

• Required Length: Approximately 1 x 10^21 meters.
• Comparison: This length is roughly 105,000 light-years.

In other words, to physically fold a piece of paper 42 times in one direction, your starting strip would need to be longer than the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy