COMPLEX CONDUITS FACILITATING VERTICAL TO HORIZONTAL FLOW WITHIN CRUST TO UPPER MANTLE PERMITS SUPERCRITICAL WATERS MIXED WITHIN MANTLE

Tripartite divisions within crust form brittle to semi-plastic behavior within density and thickness ranges from 2.7 to 3.3 and 70 to 10 km, respectively, including vertical flow via "plumes" and horizontal flow to drive tectonic plates. From top to bottom, breakage can be brittle to trans-upper-crust as along paleo-plate boundaries and ancestral faults to shearing, plastic flow bent to rupture, respectively, and more complexly developed in thicker continental crust which can contain radioactive concentrations to form heat and enhanced heterogeneity. In lower crust, there are "low velocity zones (LVZ)" determined from extensive refraction stations collected from 1960s through 1990s with results contoured into circum-planet conduits concentrated beneath dynamic zones such as mid-ocean ridges, subduction and collision zones, and orogens. These conduits are passages for magma and water to migrate to depths appropriate to crust/upper mantle. With subduction zone water cycling and collapse of upper crust blocks, water on descent ceases to be liquid and becomes "supercritical" in which distinct liquid and gas phases do not exist, diffusing through solids and dissolving material. This trans-crust into mantle "flow" of solids to water form the deep water cycle. Water transference to mantle is computed at rates of 170-318 billion tons/km of subducted crust per million years, possibly recycling world ocean every 80 million years. Such movements yield novel dynamics heretofore not 'known' mandate energetic interpretations and syntheses.