The Powerball jackpot has climbed to $475 million after no tickets matched Wednesday night's drawing, the second-largest Powerball and the third largest overall lottery jackpot. The cash option is an estimated $302.4 million.
The next drawing is Saturday night.
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On Wednesday, the winning numbers drawn for the $360 million jackpot were 2, 11, 26, 34, 41, and a Powerball of 32, but not everyone lost out; tickets in Delaware and Pennsylvania won $5 million, and there were 16 states that had $1 million winners, according to Powerball's website.
The odds of winning tonight's Powerball are one in 195 million, meaning you are 251 times more likely to be hit by lightning, according to ABC News.
Skip Garibaldi, a professor of mathematics at Emory University in Atlanta, said you are more likely to die from all of the following than you are to win tonight's drawing: be hit by a falling coconut, be blown up by fireworks, or be eaten by flesh-eating bacteria than you are to win the Powerball.
That hasn't stopped thousands from rushing to their local grocery stores and gas stations in pursuit of a ticket.
"It's kind of exciting. You get this feeling of anticipation. You get to think about the fantasy," Garibaldi told ABC News.
The largest Powerball in history was $587.5 million, awarded last November to couple from Dearborn, Mo., and a man from Fountain Hills, Ariz., according to ABC News.
Most recently, Pedro Quezada, 44, of New Jersey won big on a $338 million ticket in March,
the largest Powerball sum ever paid out. He ended up shutting down his bodega in Passaic to maintain a level of privacy after becoming a media spectacle. The Passaic County Sheriff's Department reported that
Quezada owes about $29,000 in unpaid child support, and there is an active warrant for his arrest for father of five.
There is "cross-selling" of Powerball and Mega Millions tickets that began in January 2010, allowing states to sell both tickets. As a result, large jackpots will continue to surpass all-time jackpot records set years ago, said Mary Neubauer, spokeswoman for the Iowa Lottery.
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Additionally, the price of a Powerball ticket doubled in January 2012, from $1 to $2 a ticket.
"It usually took a handful of months, if not several months, for a jackpot to reach this large amount," she told the Associated Press. "Now it's achieving that within a handful of weeks. I think the redesign is achieving exactly what we had wanted it to achieve, which is the bigger, faster-growing jackpot."
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