On gauge theories of mass

The classical Einstein–Hilbert action in general relativity extends naturally to a blow-up (in the sense of algebraic geometry) of the usual space of pseudo-Riemannian metrics; this presents the metric tensor _gik$g_{ik}$ as a kind of Goldstone boson associated to the real scalar field defined by its determinant. This seems to be quite compatible with the Higgs mechanism in the standard model of particle physics.