[Pseudoscience-is-malarkey (OP)]

Does evolution apply to non-living things?

[alancalverd]

Why not? It all depends on how you define evolution.

Biologically it means a change from one generation to the next, which is obviously impossible for things that don't reproduce.

But we talk about the evolution of stars and planets, where a single object grows, shrinks, radiates or explodes without involving genetic inheritance. In the case of a star, its atomic composition evolves.

[evan_au]

In biology, the essence of evolution is genetic variation and natural selection, making changes in the frequency of genetic variants in a population over time.

While a population of stars changes over time...
- They have no genes, and so cannot undergo genetic variation and natural selection to change these genes

[Bored chemist]

Car design and genetic algorithms?
It depends what you mean by evolve.

[Pseudoscience-is-malarkey (OP)]

Take the planets in our solar system for example. Only the toughest clumps of rocks survived, no?

[hamdani yusuf]

Take the planets in our solar system for example. Only the toughest clumps of rocks survived, no?

What happened to those clumps of rock that didn't survive? What have they become now?

[alancalverd]

Only the toughest clumps of rocks survived, no?

Misconception of evolution!

Evolution (genetic change between generations) necessarily precedes natural selection, and selection is not inevitable if the new variant occupies a different ecological niche. Planets evolve entirely seperately!