Adam McLean wrote,
From what I have read, the temperature on the sun's surface is about 6,000 deg K and although the core of the sun is about 15 million deg K, there is also 250 billion atms of pressure there (see:
http://www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/sol.html).
................not only that -- apparently the reaction-rate is so low, its equivalent to the heat production rate (biochem. reactions) of a sleeping human being (on a per-unit-mass basis.... the sun has a lot of mass though....).
That's 'cause the sun has to produce the Ds & Ts in-situ from the hydrogen its made of..... the p-p reaction is a very low probability event in sun-like stars (much more so in certain very old stars, where the catalytic C-N-O proton-burning cycle may kick in...)
Jaro