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What the heck is going on in the middle of Australia? There is NOTHING there (not even stuff that might burn!), yet the map shows a pile of lights.

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They're wildfires.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3YYwIsMHzw&feature=youtu...

Mining. It doesn't make sense to me that there are so many spots that are larger than Sydney or Melbourne (sprawling cities of 4M people). I wouldn't be surprised to see some lights there, but I highly doubt that the miners are setting up lighting grids that rival the street lights of cities 70km by 70km in size.

(edit: for comparison, Greater Melbourne and Greater London are roughly the same size)

It can't be mining, otherwise we would see similar patterns in South Australia (at least) with similar patterns likely to be visible in every other state as well.

I'd be interested in knowing why this is so as well.

There's similar patterns in north central Siberia (loaded with primary resources) and a couple of other places. There's a weird bloom affect on these spots that's not evident in populated parts of the map. You can even see the bloom effect on the north coast of Alaska, where I'd be extremely surprised that there's light of that level.

My guess is that they didn't quite finish the job off right and got lazy when manipulating these areas.

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