What is the highest number of times a sheet of paper can be folded in half?

It's simple to fold a piece of paper in half once, twice, or even a few times. However, there's a popular belief that a sheet of paper can't be folded more than seven times. But is it accurate? How many times can a piece of paper be folded in half?

Britney Gallivan, a former high school student in California, successfully folded a single sheet of paper 12 times and currently holds the Guinness World Record for the most times a piece of paper has been folded in half. She not only achieved the record but also came up with mathematical equations to calculate the maximum number of times any piece of paper can be folded in half in a single or multiple directions. She documented these equations in her book "How to Fold Paper in Half Twelve Times."

The challenge to fold anything in half 12 times was part of an extra-credit assignment in math class, which she accomplished by folding a sheet of gold foil, then a piece of paper. To fold a sheet of paper many times, Gallivan discovered that a long, thin sheet was needed. The more a sheet was folded, the thicker it would become, and once it became thicker than it was long, there was nothing left to fold. Gallivan set her record with a 4,000-foot-long piece of tissue paper and it took about 8 hours to complete the task. Anyone seeking to break Gallivan's record should be prepared for an extremely thick stack of paper, as after 42 folds, a sheet just 0.003 inches thick would be over 273,280 miles high.