A cardinal $\lambda$ is weakly inaccessible, iff it is a. regular (i.e. a set of cardinalily $\lambda$ can't be represented as a union of sets of cardinality $<\lambda$ indexed by a set of cardinality $<\lambda$) and b. for all cardinals $\mu<\lambda$ we have $\mu^+<\lambda$ where $\mu^+$ is the successor of $\mu$. Strongly inaccessible cardinals are defined in the same way, with $\mu^+$ replaced by $2^\mu$. Usually one also adds the condition that $\lambda$ should be uncountable.

As far as I understand, a "large cardinal" is a weakly inaccessible cardinal which has some extra properties. In set theory one considers various "large cardinal axioms", which assert the existence of large cardinals of various kinds. Notice that these axioms quite different from, say the Continuum Hypothesis. In particular, one can't deduce the consistency of ZFC + there exists at least one (uncountable) weakly inaccessible cardinal from the consistency of ZFC, see e.g. Kanamori, The Higher Infinite, p.19. I.e., assuming ZFC is consistent, these axioms can not be shown independent of ZFC.

The "reasonable" large cardinal axioms seem to be ordered according to their consistency strength, as explained e.g. here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_cardinal. This is not a theorem, just an observation. A list of axioms according to their consistency strength can be found e.g. on p. 472 of Kanamori's book mentioned above. (Noticeably, it starts with "0=1", which is a very strong axiom indeed.)

Large cardinals appear to occur seldom in "everyday" mathematics. One such instance when they occur is when one tries to construct the foundations of category theory. One of the ways to do that (and the one that seems (to me) to be the most attractive) is to start with the set theory and to add Grothendieck's Universe axiom, which states that every set is an element of a Grothendieck universe.

(As an aside remark, let me mention another application of large cardinal axioms: incredibly, the fastest known solution of the word problem in braid groups originated from research on large cardinal axioms; the proof is independent of the existence of large cardinals, although the first version of the proof did use them. See Dehornoy, From large cardinals to braids via distributive algebra, Journal of knot theory and ramifications, 4, 1, 33-79.)

Translated into the language of cardinals, the Universe axiom says that for any cardinal there is a strictly larger strongly inaccessible cardinal. I have heard several times that this is pretty low on the above consistency strength list, but was never able to understand exactly how low. So I would like to ask: does the existence of a (single) large cardinal of some kind imply (or is equivalent to) the Universe axiom?