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Yes, it does. This urban legend has gained momentum because, to disprove it, you need to use a measurement sheet that you can’t easily find around. Basically, the number of folds possible depends on the size and thickness of the paper. “The problem is that with each fold the thickness doubles and the area drops by half. Therefore, to get more folds, you need to use very thin or long paper and, preferably, very malleable”, says physicist Cláudio Furukawa, from USP.
That’s exactly what American student Britney Gallivan did, who, after creating a formula to calculate the measurements needed for a certain number of folds, decided to put theory into practice and, in 2002, reached the record mark of 12 folds. She didn’t reveal the exact size of the paper used, but using the formula, we concluded that it was at least 400 meters long. And that’s because she used a special paper, very thin.
The experience was difficult: she had to find a huge space and, even with the help of her parents, it took seven hours to reach her goal.
Although she mathematically proved that the number of possible folds is infinite, hardly anyone will do 20, 30 or 50 folds in practice. Paper the thickness of a notebook page, folded 50 times, would be 110 million kilometers thick. That’s about the distance from Earth to the Sun (149 million kilometers).