A rock drifting away from Earth shows why gravitational potential energy is negative — and why U climbs toward zero, never past it. Zero lives at infinity, so every bound object sits below it.
A negative value for gravitational potential energy is not a sign error. The deeper the value, the more tightly bound the system and the more energy it takes to pull the two bodies apart. Gravitational potential energy is defined to be zero when the two bodies are infinitely far apart, which is why U is negative at every finite separation.
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