On a scale where the Sun is the size of a basketball the nearest star is?

Answer 1

Let us do a little math.

The diameter of a Basketball is about 9 inches. The diameter of the sun is 865 thousand miles. That is 54 billion inches. The next nearest star to ours, Proxima Centauri, is about 4.3 light years away. As there are 5.88 trillion miles per light year, that is 1.76 quintillion inches.

So with ratios and proportions, 9 is to 54 billion what x (basketball scale) is to 1.76 quintillion. It works out to 290 million inches, which is still a stretch. About 4570 miles, or roughly twice the distance between New York and Los Angeles.

A couple hundred miles less than the distance between New York and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Answer 2

On this scale, the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, would be approximately 4.2 miles away.