Java弱引用(WeakReference)

最近在看ThreadLocal，看到WeakReference，学习一下

ExecutorService executorService = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();

Student student = new Student();
WeakReference<Student> weakReference = new WeakReference<>(student);

executorService.execute(() -> {
    try {
        Thread.sleep(3000);
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    System.gc();
});
executorService.execute(() -> {
    while (weakReference.get() != null){
        try {
            Thread.sleep(1000);
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        System.out.println(System.currentTimeMillis()/1000);
    }
});
//①
executorService.shutdown();

输出

1544711490
1544711491
1544711492

嗯，意料之中！于是又继续测试，在上文①处添加：

try {
    Thread.sleep(3000);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

输出：

1544712033
1544712034
1544712035
1544712036
1544712037
1544712038
1544712039
1544712040
1544712041
...

这不科学啊，我只是sleep了3秒，并没有引用student，为什么没有回收？
我认为student是局部变量，当前方法持有引用student至方法结束，刚好和System.gc()所在的线程sleep时间一样，student应仍被引用。我尝试将main线程sleep 3秒改为sleep 2999ms，此时如果main结束了，则不再持有引用student，结果同第一种情况。