What is the typical temperature hovering inside a cosmic molecular cloud?

10 Kelvin (10 K)

The environment within a molecular cloud must be extremely cold for molecules to remain stable and bound together without being immediately ionized or dissociated. The typical temperature range cited for these stellar nurseries hovers specifically around 10 Kelvin. This extreme cold is a non-negotiable requirement because if the gas were significantly warmer, the increased kinetic energy would prevent the necessary molecular bonds from forming or cause the tenuous cloud structure to disperse too quickly, preventing the gravitational collapse needed to form new stars. This contrasts drastically with terrestrial clouds or the much hotter states found in regions dominated by atomic or ionized hydrogen.