There are roughly two ways you could imagine a human corpse seeding life across the cosmos. Either by delivering living microbes, or — if all those viruses, bacteria, and other germs died in route — sparking the genesis of entirely new life entirely. Both, it seems, are possible.

“If the question is, ‘Are there a set of possible circumstances by which a corpse could deliver microbes to a planet that could survive the space environment?’ well, then I would say the answer is yes,” says Gary King, a microbial biologist at Louisiana State University who studies microbes that survive in extreme environments.

King argues that our bodies are riddled with microbes we already know can survive vast periods of time in stasis; even in cold, dry environments similar to space.

“We’ve pulled microbes out of permafrost, and there we’re talking about organisms surviving around one million years in suspended animation. Especially if the trip is somewhere close, like to Mars, bacterial spores in the human body will survive for sure,” says King. “It’s also possible that other, non-sporing bacteria could survive as well. I’m thinking about microbes like Deinococcus radiodurans, which we know can survive low levels of water and high amounts of ionizing radiation.”