Suppose you have a finite collection of point particles interacting gravitationally via good old Newtonian mechanics. And suppose that:
The time averages of the total kinetic energy and the total potential energy are well-defined.
The positions and velocities of the particles are bounded for all time.
Then we have
= -/2
where is the time average of the total kinetic energy, and is the time average of the total potential energy.
I always found this to be a bit magical. It seems surprising at first that such a simple law could hold so generally. But in fact, it's just a special case of something called the "virial theorem", which also applies to forces other than gravity, and impacts everything from astronomy to the theory of gases.
For example, out in space, very often a bunch of particles will collapse to form a gravitationally bound system. If the system is roughly in equilibrium so the time averages of kinetic and potential energy are close to their current values, the virial theorem implies that T = -(1/2) V. we know that = -/2. This is a terrific thing, because it lets you find the masses of bound systems. In fact, it's really the reason we think that dark matter exists.
To be specific, suppose you measure the speeds of a bunch of visible objects in your system, and infer T. Then the virial theorem tells you V. If you find out that the potential well is deeper than what you'd get by adding up the contributions from the masses of everything you see, you know there's dark matter. People do this for spiral galaxies, elliptical galaxies, and galaxy clusters, getting strong evidence for dark matter in all cases.
For applications of the virial theorem to astrophysics, this book is good:
William C. Saslaw, Gravitational physics of stellar and galactic systems, Cambridge U. Press, Cambridge, 1985.