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Fold A Piece Of Paper In Half 103 Times And It Will Be As Thick As The Universe

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Stephen Luntz

Stephen has a science degree with a major in physics, an arts degree with majors in English Literature and History and Philosophy of Science and a Graduate Diploma in Science Communication.

Freelance Writer

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1548 Fold A Piece Of Paper In Half 103 Times And It Will Be As Thick As The UNIVERSE

Planck data, NASA

Did you know that if you could fold a piece of typical paper 42 times you would have a tower that would stretch to the moon? No? It's just one of the amazing examples of exponential growth given by Nikola Slavkovic in the video below.

Ahh you say, but it is impossible to fold a piece of paper more than eight times. Turns out, like so many unreferenced claims, that isn't true. The record is in fact 12. Still that twelve-fold piece of paper isn't even table height – it's hard to imagine getting from there to the Moon in 30 folds. That's because our brains are inclined to think linearly, not exponentially.

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H/t Gizmodo


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