About gc two objects which are inter referenced to each other

my workmate told me such a senario, there're two objects, which are instantiated in a local method, respectively assigned to local variables. A class has  a type B field, B class has a type A field, and their instances, each has other's instance, the following program illustrates:

 

class A {
	B b;
	
	public A() {
		System.out.println("constructing a");
	}
	
	public void finalize() {
		System.out.println("finalize a");
	}
}

class B {
	A a;
	
	public B() {
		System.out.println("constructing b");
	}
	
	public void finalize() {
		System.out.println("finalize b");
	}
}

public class Test {
	
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		new Test().go();
	}
	
	public void go() {
		A a = new A();
		B b = new B();
		
		a.b = b;
		b.a = a;
		
		try {
			a = null;
			b = null;
			System.gc();
			Thread.sleep(10000);
		} catch (InterruptedException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
		
	}
	
	public void finalize() {
		System.out.println("finalize Test");
	}
}

 

guess what? as we may reasonably guess: even if the method finishes, each instance has been referenced by the other one at least, so they wouldn't be garbage collected, right? but the actual result is:

constructing a
constructing b
finalize b
finalize a

 

they are both garbage collected even if they may still be referenced. WHY ?

 

primary conclusion may be they two as a whole has been treated a one object which's no longer be referenced, so they get garbage collected.