Consider an open subset $U \subseteq \mathbb{R}^n$ and a smooth function $f\colon U \longrightarrow \mathbb{R}$ with $f(x) \ge 0$ for all $x \in U$.
It is then known (if I remember correctly: by Michor?) that $f = g^2$ with a function $g$ which can be shown to be twice differentiable but not $C^2$ in general. In particular, a smooth square root does not exist in general.
My question is whether $f$ can be represented as a sum of squares of smooth functions, i.e. the smooth version of Hilbert's problem 17, and if so, what is the minimal number of squares needed?