Potential and potential energy are not twins! They're kinda like cousins. They both relate to fields but they have distinct roles.

Think of gravitational potential at a point as the amount of work you'd need to do to drag a 1kg mass from the far reaches of space (literally infinity) to that point. This doesn't concern a particular object's energy; it's about the field at that point.

Imagine pulling a toy car with a string from a high slope to a lower point. The effort you put in pulling it (especially against gravity) is somewhat like the gravitational potential at that point.

Gravitational Potential (Vg) at a distance r from the center of a sphere (or teeny point object) with mass M: Vg = − \(\frac {GB × M}{r}\)

• "G" is the universal gravitational constant.
• The negative sign is because gravity is always pulling things together, so it's always "negative" or attractive.

Note: This equation was derived by taking the gravitational potential energy (Ep) and dividing it by mass (m) - but remember, it's for our 1kg "test mass".

Gravitational potential is kinda like a deep water well! At large distances from a planet, the potential is just below zero. Near the object, it's more negative.