text: Understanding of the beta decay process developed over several years, with the initial understanding of Enrico Fermi and colleagues starting at the "superficial" first level in the diagram below. Current understanding of weak processes rest at the fourth level, at the bottom of the chart, where the nucleons (the neutron and its successor proton) are largely ignored, and attention focuses only on the interaction between two quarks and a charged boson, with the decay of the boson almost treated as an afterthought. Because the charged weak boson () vanishes so quickly, it was not actually observed during the first half of the 20th century, so the diagram at level 1 omits it; even at present it is for the most part inferred by its after-effects.
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