Physical world and mathematics

Large cardinal hierarchy

The large cardinal hierarchy orders large-cardinal axioms by consistency strength, usually as a chain of equiconsistencies running from measurable cardinals up to the rank-into-rank axioms, the strongest not known to contradict choice.

Large eddy simulation

Large eddy simulation (LES) is a computational technique for turbulent flow that resolves large energy-carrying eddies directly while modeling only the smallest subgrid-scale motions, at a cost between RANS and DNS.

Large Electron–Positron Collider

The Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) was a 27-kilometer electron–positron collider at CERN near Geneva, the largest ever built, which operated from 1989 to 2000 and produced 17 million Z bosons before its tunnel hosted the LHC.

Large extra dimensions

Large extra dimensions are spatial dimensions beyond the familiar three, proposed in 1998 by Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulos, and Dvali, explaining gravity's weakness as dilution into extra-dimensional volume.

Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest particle accelerator, a 27-kilometer ring at CERN near Geneva where protons collide and the Higgs boson was discovered in 2012.

Large igneous province

A large igneous province (LIP) is a vast accumulation of mostly mafic igneous rock covering over 0.1 million km², emplaced over less than 50 million years.

Large low-shear-velocity provinces

Large low-shear-velocity provinces (LLSVPs) are two continent-sized regions of slow seismic waves at the base of Earth's mantle, one beneath Africa and one beneath the Pacific, identified by seismic tomography.

Large Magellanic Cloud

The Large Magellanic Cloud (Nubecula Major) is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way about 160,000 light-years away and the larger of the two Magellanic Clouds.

Large Magellanic Cloud dark matter wake

A dark matter overdensity trailing the Large Magellanic Cloud through the Milky Way's outer halo, predicted by simulations in 2019 and detected in 2021, with a visible stellar counterpart used to weigh the LMC.

Large Millimeter Telescope

The Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT), known in Mexico as the Gran Telescopio Milimétrico Alfonso Serrano, is a 50-meter radio telescope at 4600 m on Sierra Negra, Puebla, Mexico.

Large N expansion

The large N expansion is a method in theoretical physics, introduced by Gerardus 't Hooft in 1974, solving gauge theories in the limit of infinitely many colors.

Large numbers

Large numbers, or very large numbers, are numbers far beyond everyday counting, conventionally starting around a million, expressed through -illion names, scientific notation, SI prefixes, and googology.

Large polarons in halide perovskites

Large polarons in halide perovskites are quasiparticles in which an electron or hole moves through the crystal with the polarization cloud it induces in the soft lattice.

Large polarons in hybrid perovskites

Large polarons in hybrid perovskites are charge carriers dressed by a polarization cloud in the soft lattice, explaining long lifetimes and defect tolerance in perovskite devices.

Large polarons in lead-halide perovskites

Large polarons in lead-halide perovskites are charge carriers dressed by lattice polarization over several nanometers, proposed to explain the materials' long carrier lifetimes and defect tolerance.

Large quasar group

A large quasar group is a grouping of quasars closely matched in redshift and position, implying a larger dimmer structure; the Huge-LQG was the largest known structure in 2013.

Large sieve

The large sieve is a method in analytic number theory, introduced by Yuri Linnik in 1941, that controls a sequence of numbers simultaneously modulo many small moduli.

Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope

The Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST), also called the Guoshoujing Telescope, is a Chinese telescope that takes spectra of 4,000 objects at once.

Large woody debris

Large woody debris (LWD), now often called large wood, is logs, root wads, and branches in stream channels large enough to resist immediate transport by the flow.

Large-scale structure of the universe

The large-scale structure of the universe, known as the cosmic web, is the pattern in which galaxies cluster along filaments and sheets surrounding vast voids.

Largest known prime number

The largest known prime number, the Mersenne prime 2^136,279,841 − 1, has 41,024,320 digits and was found by Luke Durant via the GIMPS project in 2024.

Larimar

Larimar is a bluish, gem-quality variety of the mineral pectolite, found only in the Dominican Republic, where it was rediscovered in 1974 and made the national stone.

Larmor formula

The Larmor formula, or Larmor radiation, gives the total power radiated by an accelerating point charge at nonrelativistic speeds, proportional to the square of the acceleration.

Larmor precession

Larmor precession is the rotation of a magnetic moment about the axis of an applied magnetic field at a rate proportional to the field strength.

Larmor radius

The Larmor radius, or gyroradius, is the radius of a charged particle's circular motion perpendicular to a magnetic field, a basic length scale in plasma physics.

Sep 21, 2026

Larry A. Wasserman

Larry A. Wasserman is a statistician and machine learning researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016 and author of All of Statistics.

Larry D. McLerran

Larry D. McLerran (born 1949) is an American theoretical nuclear physicist known for the Color Glass Condensate, quarkyonic matter, and the glasma in quantum chromodynamics.

Sep 21, 2026

Larry E. Overman

Larry E. Overman, born in 1943, is an American organic chemist at the University of California, Irvine, known for the Overman rearrangement and over 100 total syntheses of natural products.