I am a noob too, but I think...
First of all excuse me if you think its a noob question, but consider me a noob as I am trying to understand.
I've got a couple of questions about mining, (which I think fits in bitcoin section rather than the mining section)
First: Why do bitcoin needs mining? To incentivize the miner for validating/confirming bitcoin transactions.
Second: What do they actually mine? Bitcoin.