AUGUSTA — In the eight minutes Tim Poulin spent talking about Mega Millions to a reporter, store clerks around Maine sold another 4,000 tickets.

“I’ve not seen this, ever,” said Poulin, director of operations at the Maine State Lottery.

Just before noon, officials announced that the Mega Millions jackpot had risen to $640 million, the largest in the world, ever.

Across the country, Americans plunked down an estimated $1.5 billion on an infinitesimally small chance to win it.

So what exactly would happen if the country spent that $1.5 billion on something other than a distant dream?

For starters, it could cure everyday worries for hundreds of thousands of American families hit by the Great Recession. It costs an average of $6,129 to feed the typical family for a year — meaning the cash spent on tickets could fill up the plates of 238,000 households.

As gas prices climb faster than stations can change the numbers on the signs, the money spent on tickets could fill the tanks of 685,000 households annually.

Or it could play politics. So far in this campaign, Republicans and President Barack Obama have spent $348.5 million. The amount spent on Mega Millions tickets could cover that tab four times over.

Could the money dig governments out of debt? That’s a problem that even staggering ticket sales can’t solve. It could trim this year’s expected $1.3 trillion federal deficit by just over a tenth of 1 percent.

On a personal level, that much money staggers. Giving $1.46 billion to a broker could purchase 2.4 million shares of Apple stock. (It would also be enough to buy about 2.9 million iPads at the starting price of $499. That’s almost as many as the 3 million new iPads that Apple has already sold.)

Or consider the whimsical: A family of up to 12 could live for more than a century at Musha Cay, magician David Copperfield’s $37,000-a-night private island resort in the Exuma Cays of the Caribbean.

For a more celestial vacation, the $1.5 billion wagered could purchase 7,600 tourist tickets for a ride into space aboard Virgin Galactic’s Space Ship Two. And it would pay for 26 rides for U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

For the states that participate, the money spent on lotto tickets is hardly a waste. It doesn’t all end up as the winner’s personal fortune — much of it is used by states to fund education and other social service programs, which is why advocates promote the lottery.

In Maine, about 30 cents of each dollar spent on tickets goes to lottery profits.

Maine has participated in the Mega Millions lottery since May 2010 and has never had a winner.

“We hope that changes tonight,” Poulin said.

Mega Millions is played in 43 states and territories. The more popular Powerball is played in 44. During an average week, Poulin said, Maine sells 340,000 Powerball tickets and 125,000 Mega Millions chances.

This is no average week.

On Thursday, Mainers bought 413,000 Mega Millions tickets. Just before noon Friday, Maine players bought another 323,000.

“We probably believe that today will be the biggest day ever for sales on a game, period, but we won’t know that until 9:30 tonight,” he said, when sales stop in advance of the 11 p.m. drawing.

Checking in with clerks and staff, sales appeared to be going smoothly across the state. Stores had not run out of ticket paper, he said.

The odds of winning such an enormous prize? One in more than 175 million,  said Bill Halteman, professor of mathematics and statistics at the University of Maine.

So, not great.

“Nobody thinks about dying in an airplane crash, yet your odds of dying in an airplane crash are 12½ times (greater than) the odds of winning the lottery,” he said.

To think of it another way, he said: Picture picking one person at random in the U.S. somewhere between the Indiana/Illinois border and the Atlantic Ocean.

Still, Halteman has been known to buy a ticket.

On reason: “Being a statistician, I look at my relative chances of coming up with this amount of money in any other fashion,” he said. “Inventing something, hitting the stock market, being Warren Buffett. My chances of winning the lottery are probably my best chances of coming in contact with half a billion dollars.”

The odds of a winning ticket being sold by drawing time? About nine in 10, Poulin said.

For the lucky ticket holder, that $640 million jackpot will be available in a lump sum of $462 million.

The estimated jackpot dwarfs the previous $390 million record, which was split in 2007 by two winners who bought tickets in Georgia and New Jersey.

If there isn’t a winner Friday night, the jackpot for the next Mega Millions drawing, on Tuesday, will start at $975 million.

kskelton@sunjournal.com

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