I’ve often wondered this (forgive my ignorance if it is an utterly silly idea)….
As far as I understand it, mass is actually an interaction with the Higgs field and this defines the mass of a ‘particle’ (which I understand to be a collapsed waveform or excitation of a field).
What if we could change how a particle interacted with the Higgs field? Could we actually change the mass of a particle?
Surely, if as you stated, mass is the interaction with the Higgs field, and we changed how a particle interacted with the Higgs field, then it would change the mass by definition.
Though not exactly what the question asked, quarks and black holes may have similar densities (mass is still an important component). The attached specifies the density of atomic nuclei and black holes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I though quarks were the building blocks of protons and neutrons.
The issue, I believe that even though the densities are similar, the total mass of a quark is not enough to cause the gravity that a black hole exhibits.
chem.libretexts.org
This is interesting but density kinda hides a lot of issues. The volume of a black hole is calculated using the Schwarzchild radius, or event horizon. But an event horizon is 'porous' not a hard limit. If you were flying a spaceship past the event horizon of Sagittarius A* you would not notice it - it's still normal space-time. The mass inside is much smaller
By definition a black hole is an object whose real radius is smaller than its Schwarzchilds radius which also indicates that the mass inside this radius is causing the curvature of spacetime to become infinite at some point inside.
So for example:
The Schwarzchild radius of the Sun is ~3km but it's actual radius is ~700,000km
and of a human is ~1 x10-25km but actual radius about 50cm! (Using a physicists definition of the radius of a human
)
When it comes to particles it gets a bit more complicated because, yes, we treat elementary particles like electrons and quarks as point particles - i.e. they are infinitesimal in size. So...if the volume is infinitely small, then no matter what the mass is, surely they will be infinitely dense - or we have a definite positive Schwarzchild radius (see below) but it's actual volume/radius is essentially zero, and should therefore curve spacetime infinitely.
But point particles is a theoretical concept which helps the maths. If we take quantum mechanics into account, the 'size' of a particle, which can be represented by a wavefunction, is 'spread out'.
So to give you some numbers.
mass of a Proton is 1.67 x10 ^ -27 kg. It's Schwarzchild radius is ~2.5 x 10 ^ -54 m. It's "quantum radius" can be calculated to be: ~1 x 10 -15 m
For the biggest quark that we've measured, the Top quark
It's mass is approximately 3 x 10 ^ -25 kg, giving a Schwarzchild radius of ~4.5 x 10 ^ -52 m, whereas it's quantum radius would be ~7 x 10 -18 m
As you can see the 'real' radius of the particle is
much bigger than the Schwarzchild radius. For a 'point particle' to become a black hole, I believe, it's mass has to be of order 0.1 milligrams, using the above calculations!
I think the other way of looking at the above is that it's telling you that the mass of any of the quarks we know about does not make the curvature of space-time around them infinite.
