There’s mega Mega excitement in the air

Lottery fever is burning through the USA as people scramble to buy tickets for the big bucks of a lifetime – a record-breaking $1.6 billion Mega Millions jackpot.

Mega Millions now stands as the largest jackpot in U.S. history after moving past the $1.586 billion Powerball drawing on Jan. 13, 2016.

Sales figures are hard to exaggerate. One local Nebraska newspaper reports that tickets sold at a rate of about 400 a minute on Friday. In California, the lottery Thursday sold 5.7 million in the first half of the day. Mega Millions tickets can be bought in 44 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The next drawing is Tuesday.

There were also no winners in Saturday’s $476.7 million Powerball jackpot, ratcheting up the next jackpot Wednesday to $620 million, the lottery said.

If it seems that the lines have gotten longer with every drawing or that jackpots have exploded in growth lately, it’s because they have. Lottery officials began tinkering with the odds in 2015 to lessen the chance of winning a jackpot, which in turn increased the opportunity for top prizes to reach exorbitant levels. As the money grows to those high figures, an increasing number of skeptics and first-time players are swayed to get in on the action.

How can you increase your odds? You could buy a ticket with each of the possible six-number combinations. That is, if you can afford it.

“If you wanted to guarantee yourself a win, it would cost you around 600 million bucks,” said Chris O’Byrne, a professor of management information at San Diego State University. “Even if you won, you could have to split the winnings with someone else who guesses the right numbers. So, good luck doing that.”