What is mdworker and why is using so much of my CPU?

I've read earlier threads in which mdworker is mentioned or discussed but have not found an answer for my question. Actually, one post came close, but it was from a few years ago, and mentioned a tab on Activity Monitor that does not exist on copy.
So, the issue is that periodically my fan starts racing. I'm used to that happening when Time Machine is doing its backups, but recently I've noticed that it's happening even though Time Machine is not running. When I go to the Activity Monitor I see that mdworker is using a very high percentage of my CPU's capacity, way more than any other process.
I gather from scanning posts on earlier threads that mdworker is used by other processes, and that the problem may lie there. But I don't know how to identify the other processes or what to do when I find them.
Help appreciated.
Thanks,
Eric Weir

Mac Medic ([email protected]) wrote:
Click on your Spotlight icon when it's happening. mdworker is a process used for indexing files for Spotlight.
Thanks. Can't see that anything is. However, in connection with another issue I'm having [Mail sends hanging up] I've been monitoring the console. In ~/Library/Logs/Sync/Tags.log I see numerous reports that look like this:
12:52:29: Mail Tags Spotlight Plugin initialized (mdworker)
These are occasionally broken up by more ominous looking records, such as this:
FAILURE: 21:17:15: Error when retrieving tags from path /Users/ericweir/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/1 priority/2 news.mbox/Messages/308064.emlx: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=2 UserInfo=0x10018d5e0 "The operation couldn’t be completed. No such file or directory" (mdworker)
And this:
10:34:22: Tags build 2096 started: 2011-05-02 10:34:22 -0400
10:34:22: Spotlight plugin registered!
FAILURE: 10:34:22: The spotlight attribute kMDItemOMUserTags is not registered
FAILURE: 10:34:22: The spotlight attribute kMDItemOMUserTagTime is not registered
10:34:23: Tag Query kMDItemOMUserTags == '*' executed
Tags is a tagging utility I checked out a couple months or so back that I decided not to use. I'm assuming the records in this log have reference to it. I still have the app installed. Might getting rid of it resolve the problem?

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