t′ at the LHC:: the physics of discovery

A search for a fourth family at the LHC is presently a low priority, but we argue that an e effective search can be conducted early with only a few inverse femtobarns of data. We discuss a method based on invariant masses of single jets for identifying the W's originating from heavy quark decays. This can significantly increase signal to background in the reconstruction of the t' mass. We also study the various types of physics that can impact the background estimate, most notably higher order effects, initial state radiation, and models of the underlying event.