It was interesting to see that Bill Gates had with him on his visit to the ENEA labs in Italy, Lowell Wood, who is an astrophysicist and has served as a member of the director’s technical staff at the University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (UCLLNL). He is currently working as a professor at the University of Houston. Gates apparently trusts Wood’s judgement as he has advised him on various subjects.
Wood has a long history of working in various outside-the-box science projects, including geoengineering (to reduce the impacts of climate change), and missile defense systems. Since we have been looking at the possibility of Bill Gates supporting cold fusion, I have tried to see what I can find regarding Lowell Wood’s history with cold fusion.
Below are some excerpts from various articles
“[Peter Hagelstein] was flying out to visit the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California when the news of cold fusion hit in 1989, and he met with Teller and Lowell Wood, another prominent Livermore scientist, the next day. Both men encouraged him to work on cold fusion. (Teller died last year, but Wood continues to support cold fusion and attends the conferences.) ” (Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54964-2004Nov16_2.html)
“Wood is infamous for championing fringe science, from X-ray lasers to cold-fusion nuclear reactors, as well as for his long affiliation with the Hoover Institution, a right-wing think tank on the Stanford campus.” (Rolling Stone: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/can-geoengineering-save-the-world-20111004
“At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, Edward Teller, the aging “father of the H-bomb” and an almost mythic hero to conservatives, had declared soon after the Salt Lake City press conference that cold fusion “sounds right.” His protégé, Lowell Wood, anxious to prove his mentor correct, attempted to reproduce the Fleischmann-Pons experiment. Unfamiliar with electrochemistry, Wood set off an explosion in his laboratory when hydrogen, liberated by electrolysis, ignited. The blast shattered his apparatus and ended his quest for cold fusion.” (New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/p/park-voodoo.html)
Dr. Edward Teller’s associate, Dr. Lowell Wood of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (a nuclear weapons research facility), attended both ICCF7 and ICCF8. At the latter conference, Dr. Wood seemed impressed with the quality of papers and appeared convinced of the reality of the phenomenon.(Infinite Energy: http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue44/iccf9.html)
This still doesn’t tell us exactly what was discussed during Bill Gates’ visit to the ENEA labs, but it does let us know that Wood is familiar with LENR, and that could have been one reason he was invited to make the trip to Italy with Gates.