system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: It’s said that, theoretically, if you fold a paper 42 times, it will reach the Moon, and if you fold it 103 times, it’s width will surpass the observable universe. How does this work?
gpt
Lets say you have a piece of paper. A standard, off the shelf piece of single-sheet printer paper (those ones that come in reams of 500 or so) is around 0.08mm thick.

If you fold this piece of paper in half, you're doubling its thickness, from 0.08mm to 0.16mm. Do this 42 times, that is 2^(42), or 4,398,046,500,000. Multiply that by 0.08mm (and convert that to km) is 351,843.72 km.

The distance from Earth to the Moon is about 384,400 km.

Not quite there, but perhaps the original theory used paper slightly thicker than 0.08mm. If we had a piece of paper 0.0875mm thick, then that's 384,829.07 km. We've made it!

Now, if we fold this 0.0875mm thick paper a 43rd time, then the distance reached is  769,658.139 km. Notice the large jump in distance? 44 times? 1,539,316.28 km. We're starting to get to some really large numbers.

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Just for completionists sake; 103 times is  887,355,420,000,000,000,000,000 km. That's a lot of football fields. ;-)

Edit: fixed a few typos. And oh boy, did this little comment blow up! Thanks, and thank you OP for the fun question!