UCL alumni combine for Friday night on Fourth Plinth

The coveted Friday night slot on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth has a double UCL connection this week.

Former PhD student Chris Lintott (UCL Physics & Astronomy) will spend an hour on top of the London landmark at 7pm on Friday 14 August.

He will demonstrate how to listen to meteors using a simple radio as part of sculptor Antony Gormley's 'One & Other' project.

Gormley, a graduate of the UCL Slade School of Fine Art, has invited hundreds of people to occupy the empty plinth - a space usually reserved for kings and generals.

Different people are spending an hour each on top of the plinth for 24 hours a day for 100 days to create what Gormley describes as a 'living monument'.

Lintott, a co-presenter of the BBC's 'The Sky at Night' astronomy programme, will play recordings of the Perseid meteor shower over an amplified speaker.

The recordings were made using a special antenna in Devon, but he will use photos to show how you can 'hear' meteors by setting a radio to the lowest frequency that doesn't receive a clear signal and listening to the static.

Image: Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth.

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